bret treasure
TRANSCRIPT
What Kahneman says about
online marketing
A précis of a talk by bret treasure
• Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’
describes seminal research over the last 30
years in psychology dealing with how people
decide. My presentation applied that learning
to web design and online marketing.
• I looked at Primacy, the powerful effect on
humans of a first impression. Using examples
of the insurance industry and the liquor retail
industry I made suggestions that would result
in a stronger initial impression, rather than the
current emphasis on triage.
• I made critical comment about designers’
propensity to defer gratification, when
research shows immediacy is more powerful.
• I said that for the moment, our medium owns
the word ‘now’ and we don’t do enough with
it.
• I looked at the industry tendency to shy away
from emotion, when research shows this is far
more influential than rationality.
• I cited research that shows how people can be
manipulated into donating more money
• I talked about how Priming can be used to
influence behaviour on web sites.
• I contrasted the well-understood and
somewhat simplistic ‘sales funnel’ model with
what I call the ‘engagement chamber’ model.
• I explained how people are far more sensitive
to loss than cost and explored implications for
shopping cart design.
• I described Recency, an effect that causes
people to be influenced disproportionately
what happened last.
• I gave examples of how we could exploit this
better in web design.
