Website Conversion Testing

I just wrote an article about how most of our purchase decisions are made in the unconscious part of mind.

There are actually three parts of our brain. We have the part we control. You are using that part of your mind right now as you read this.  Then there’s the part that controls how we feel as we read. Then the part of our mind that controls our breathing and keeps us alert to what is happening around us.

All but one of these things is happening subconsciously, we can’t control, this is just happening without us even being aware of it.

Let me give you an example;

Let’s say I’m driving down the road there are three things happening;

1.  I’m thinking about a fight I had with my daughter.
2. I’m angry because there are a lot of things I should’ve said that I didn’t.
3. I’m  driving the car.

I am subconsciously driving the car down the road.

Now someone pulls in front of me. I immediately (without even thinking) slam on the brakes and turn the steering wheel.

As I get control of the car here’s what is going on in my mind.

1. I am no longer angry, I just want to get home to hug my daughter and tell her how much I love her.
2. I am still driving the car
3. I am crying.

We do not have as much control over the decisions we make as we might think we do!

We have less control of the decisions we make then we have control over them.

John Bargh ran a series of experiments where groups of people had to unscramble a list of words.

• Group one: unscrambled rood, angry words.
• Group two: unscrambled words that were neither angry or calm.
• Group three: unscrambled words that were happy, calm, pleasant and easy-going or laid back.

The second part of the experiment had these people, once they finished unscrambling the words, go down the hall and find the instructor. When they walked into the instructor’s office the instructor was talking with someone else.

Now…the someone else is part of the experiment. The idea is to see how if there is a difference in how the person that unscrambled the rude words would react to having to wait when compared to the people in the nice or nothing group.

• What they found out is that 20% of the people that unscrambled the happy calm words interrupted the instructor within 10 minutes.
• While 40% of the people that unscrambled the neither, rude or happy words interrupted the instructor within 10 minutes.
• But a whopping 60 percent interrupted then instructor from the rude word group.

When they asked the group of people if unscrambling the words had any impact at all on how long they were willing to wait before interrupting the instructor, all said no.

This tells us that our unconscious mind has more control over the decisions we make in our conscious mind then we do.

And this tells us that there is no way possible for someone to be able to consciously tell you what causes them to click or not to click on a particular item on your website.

It means that they can’t tell you what colors would have the most impact on them, or what makes them purchase from one website over another.

That’s why it’s important that we are constantly fine tuning, tweaking, and testing our website designs and offers to test the impact it’s having on our website visitors.