Do you want to improve your customer's online experience (CX)?

Understand how they actually make decisions.

How can Behavioral Design help you develop your website or app to improve your customer’s online experience (especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic)?

Stores have closed during the quarantine period; People have to maintain social distancing or are less willing to go out for fear of getting infected. Are you deciding to move your business online because of the current situation? There are some things about your customers you need to know!

People have bounded rationality [1], i.e. there are limits to their thinking capacity, the information, and time available to them. This concept introduced by H. A. Simon challenges the Rational Choice Theory of standard economics, providing companies with a new need: understanding how their customers really make decisions.

Why is this so important? Let’s find out together 💪

Think about how athletes’ performances have changed over time. In 1950, it took from 7 to 10 days to climb the Half Dome mountain in California; 50 years later it only took 2 hours and 20 minutes. What was the amazing transformation that made it possible? Athletes began to completely understand their bodies [2]. In the same way, you can highly improve your customer’s online experience if you only understand how their minds work.

For businesses aiming to accelerate digital conversion, innovation in CX must include understanding customers' decision-making process to promote behavior change. Innovation has to be constant and adaptive to the ever-changing context, especially in e-commerce. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you might rethink how you address your customers’ needs. But, how can you do that unless you understand what those needs are?

Behavioural Design gives you clear and actionable insights you can apply to your business to understand what drives your customers and to innovate and improve their online experience.

You might think that the more options you will offer to your customers, the easier it will be for them to find the alternative that satisfies their ideal preference, according to the assumptions of standard economics. But, this is not really the way people’s minds work.

Due to the bounded rationality, the more alternatives we have when making a decision, the higher is the probability to get overwhelmed by the options. This is known as choice overload and if your customers experience that, it might lead them to make poor decisions, due to decision fatigue, or abandon the process itself, due to analysis paralysis.

Do you have to eliminate some of the options you offer to your customers, then? Not at all!

Scarcity is one of the several behavioral insights that can be applied to facilitate your customers in navigating through the choices on your website or app and help them to choose without reducing the options.

When an object or resource has limited availability (for example, stock or limited time), customers tend to perceive it as more valuable. An interesting example of the application of scarcity is given by Uber Eats.

Source: Growth Design

The food delivery company gives its customers a reason to choose a specific restaurant among several alternatives.

“Free delivery expires in 2:41.

Customers near you are ordering now. Share deliver and save”

By using a limited resource (and some social proof), Uber Eats persuades its new users to select a restaurant where other people are about to buy from and share the delivery fee (which automatically comes for free!). Therefore, among the choices the customers have, they might opt for this specific restaurant to take advantage of the discount.

Tip: Use the principle of scarcity ethically, finding a real and valuable reason for your customers. Scarcity should be used to help the users make a decision and not to pressure them.

Understanding the latest research findings in behavioral design is a great way to start improving CX. But, how can Behavioral Design really help you develop your website or app?

When designing behavioral solutions based on scientific evidence, it is extremely important to test different interventions and evaluate the most efficient solutions for your business. So that you can understand its impact and adapt your future strategy accordingly.

Behavioral Designers very often use the Randomised Control Trial (RCT), which is a robust method to evaluate the effect of interventions based on behavioral insights such as the one explored. If you’re curious about it, the ‘Test, Learn, Adapt’ approach developed by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) in the UK clearly shows the steps to follow in order to design and conduct RCTs [3].

These examples illustrate the major contribution of Behavioral Design to enhance customer’s online experience: it can increase the effectiveness of your customer experience strategy by deeply understanding their decision-making process.

Interested in knowing more about how to improve customer’s online experience with Behavioral Design? Get in touch.

Silvia Cottone

Behavioral Science Consultant & Worldwide Speaker

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Reference

[1] Simon, H. A. (1982). Models of bounded rationality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[2] TEDXHochschuleLuzern: The Big five.

[3] Haynes, L., Service, O., Goldacre, B., & Torgerson, D. (2012). Test, learn, adapt. Developing Public Policy with Randomised Controlled Trials. Cabinet Office. [Accessed 06 May 2020].