Introduction

Ever wonder why sometimes you come across very unusual ads with extremely odd combinations, you simply cannot understand why and how would that set of combination be used? Some way somehow that has had impacted you to the point that you can take off your mind, or, even better, it intrigued you to an extent of wanting to find more, am I right?

This can be explained by Neuromarketing as Cognitive Biases, that conducts the decision-making behavioural process. The one cited above is known as Bizarreness Effect, and, is often used when attempting to make something stand out by making use of unfamiliar or unrelated elements. I bet that the title of the article’ has caught your attention as well.

Property Brothers is one of those TV shows that gets your attention and I don’t know about you, but I often caught myself trying to figure out the housing prices and what to do to improve the current house outlook. One of the recurring things it is when the brothers are called to evaluate the house and the house owners are stumble upon by surprise with the actual market selling price.

You’ve always wondered if that was a trend or a persuasive technique that the brothers were using to advertise their Letting and Selling agency services on the show, right? Well while I cannot stand by this 100%, though, what I can tell you are that, there is a specific cognitive bias that can explain the house owners’ state of mind. Endowment Effect it is used to describe when people perceive higher values of items that they own.

If we delve deep into people’s mind, as a User Experiences designer, it is quite stimulating to come across this humankind cognitive biases. These can source and guide adequate design elements that can evoke emotions. For instance, easier fonts are understood to drag more conversion, because users seem to feel more confident with intuitive journeys which tend to result in more conversions in the process.

On the other hand, there are other cognitive biases associated with fonts. For instance, in studies carried out with Restaurant menus, demonstrated that people see higher value in meals when the using fancier font, when ingredients are listed in italics and when the customer experience is above thoughts. Obviously, you will need some knowledge to know how to get the right contrasting colours and fonts, in order to resonate better with your users to drive the right attention and stand out (Von Restorff Effect - Contrast Principle).

Even though cognitive biases can help us understand how to plan our strategies, it is required to understand some principles. These can be more understand within the cognitive Bias Codex, presenting a breakdown of all the possible biases and the usage, from breaking down information to what should be the focus.

With these in mind you need to know what exactly you want to get from people, for instance, do you want people to become more aware of your product or you want to make people confident with your e-commerce, for instance. There is a step by step order to be able to achieve any goal, so basically, you need to know which exact step of the ladder you are sitting in, and most importantly, need to know your target audience or final consumer. Design principles are better applied better when you know specifically which level of the funnel your product or service is.

Direct attention — key information is clear by using Design Principles, remember about visual cueing, where you can help the user to identify where to look at. Along with that, you can use or breaks a pattern to make it stand out. Remember the odd one out, the Bizarreness Effect cited earlier, it is one of the possibilities. When we are talking about landing pages or wanting to help a user to act, use contrasting colours for the CTA button to make it stand out. This is known as the pre-attentive processing, when you deliberately break a pattern to get someone’s attention.

Educate your customers — make solutions appealing to final user, make sure to explain what exactly it is what you are offering for, and, this should use the spoken language of the target audiences to establish trust and credibility. Show your offering, explaining features and benefits. Some people will prefer more technical information whereas others will go for visuals. This is all about the common sense used by all as “features tell but the benefits will sell”.

Evoke emotions — emotions motivate target audience, remember that the old brain is all about emotion and it is the decision-making one. We always should aim to engage through emotion, you should impact it through explaining how you can get their problem solved. This can be done by offering your value proposition in view of the evolutionary psychology that can relate better with diverse industries. On the bottom of the pyramid, psychological needs (loss aversion), self-protection (threat), affiliation (social interaction, connectivity, trust), status or esteem (social comparison, hierarchy), male acquisition (sex), mate retention (love) and parenting. Use trigger elements with parsimony and appropriated to the industry, don’t overuse, this can backfire your strategy.

Decision-making — how to support and facilitate understand, the ability to offer the right amount of information to support decision-making process. People make decisions rationally based on cost benefits or irrational which is more geared towards behaviour, emotion, cognitive biases, and others. Anchor items are used, such as discounts, how much people are saving in integers and broken down the percentages and the other benefits, could be next day delivery, increase of loyalty membership benefits, etc.

Build trust and Credibility — how reliable your product or service seems? Trust is one of the things that is instantaneous (hallow effect) or red flags will hit the devil effect and as we learned before, once the crystal trust is broken, is very hard to alter that opinion. You want to aim for the trust at first sight as we know, users and consumers are the one taking the risks, not, the other way around. Provide and demonstrate how credible you are, show off your expertise, and, always be ethical and honest when delivering your promises! That thing about I trust you with closed eyes!

Create a path — consumers have made their mind and are ready to act. This is the part where user experience takes path, intuitive, no friction or cognitive load should be the smoothest ever. The more complex it gets the easier is for them to drop out of the funnel, also know, as friction. The energy is much higher than the willingness or motivation to the desired outcome. How many times were you trying to buy a product and there was an immense number of steps to complete a simple and single step of adding an item to a basket and reaching the checkout. Thinking about the user experience and make it as easy as possible for the user to complete the task.

Relationship — it is quite common for users to drop out the funnel, and, while some pretend that it doesn’t happen, the ideal here is to seek for alternatives to engage and re-engage with your customers constantly. Your goal is to keep remind of what has motivated and got their attention initially, instead of others. It is all about re-engage and engage.

You want to make your product or service appealing to customers and users on the right way. Don't overuse elements nor principles otherwise this can backfire your total strategy. Make it easy and simple as possible and add as small touch of quirkiness, in a funky way, aim for whimsical not inimical!

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