One that is often overlooked is that of Decision Architecture: influencing the outcomes of decisions by which and how choices are presented.Note: also known as Choice Architecture.
Note: successful usage changes outcomes, i.e. higher average sale, not people's underlying preferences.
If you are serious about conversion optimisation you need to understand and, to some degree, utilise Decision Architecture and associated concepts, i.e. persuasive technology.
The reason for bringing this up now is that Colleen Roller has written a complimentary piece, Decision Architecture in the Wild: A Real-Life Example, UX Matters, 19-September-2011, to an article she wrote last year, Decision Architecture: Helping Users Make Better Decisions, UX Matters, 08-November-2010.
The latest walks through a real life decision influencing process.
With a $9.99 coupon in hand, we set out...
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The studio had architected the decision-making process so we would move from making many easy decisions in the beginning, to making progressively more difficult decisions later on.
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...served the purpose of building our investment of time. This was important. ...as people invest more time in something, they become more committed to it and less willing to walk away.
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There were two other very important decision architecture concepts that came into play during this whittling down process: loss aversion and anchoring.
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the strategy leveraged the fact that, as an outcome of the picture-selection process, we already thought of the entire collection as a package, and we already saw it as being ours because we had created it ourselves.
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...a safety net—a means of minimizing any potential feeling of loss due to poor choices that might later lead to regret.
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...we now had the $300 price tag in our heads as the anchor, or reference point, against which we could compare all other potential package deals. ...had established a starting point for a further whittling down process, thereby setting into motion another series of decisions involving loss...
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It was intriguing to see how the software they used to present the photos coincided with and supported the overall sales process.
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In short, the CD-ROM would be the stopping point where customers would be able to legitimately justify the decision to buy a package deal that was, perhaps, more than they had originally planned to spend.
The article from last year is a general view of website affect and it's effect on users' decisions.
For the most part, we create Web sites to get users to do something—for example, to make a purchase, donate to a cause, or sign up for our service. It is our expectation that users will make decisions about how to proceed. But are we designing for optimal decision making by users?
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Recently, scientists have greatly advanced our understanding of how human decision making actually works.
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This research has revealed that the way people actually decide is very different from our common assumptions about how we decide.
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Decision outcomes are dependent upon the contexts within which people make decisions. Context includes factors like the complexity of a decision, how expert a decision-maker is, how many options there are, how the options compare or relate to one another, the ordering of options, the wording that expresses the options, and many others.
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People process information primarily through two mental modes, or channels, that operate in parallel. The first mode of information processing occurs primarily on the subconscious level; the second, at the conscious level.
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...context is so important to decision outcomes, it’s essential to clarify and affirm that there is no such thing as a neutral design.
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To get good decision outcomes, we must design for them.
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The goal of decision makers is to get the best possible outcome with the least possible effort. Our goal for decision architecture should be to create contexts for decision making in which users perceive that they’ve achieved the best possible outcome with the least amount of effort possible.
---How structured is your site/page/content at guiding visitors' choices - not simply about the site but through proffered conversions?
---How much thought have you invested in optimising each conversion, from the micro to the macro, including cross fertilisation where appropriate?
---How much research/reading have you accomplished/scheduled in this revenue enhancing area?
---How much analysis have you done on your conversion funnels, referer conversion numbers, etc.
---ad nauseum.
You require structure and stories. Structure is the bones, stories the flesh. Together they persuade and having done so both business and visitor are richer. When done right.
