You are browsing a website to decide what to boots to buy. You see a pair that looks good and then you scroll down to see the ratings. Many people have rated the boots highly, but a few say the boots are cheaply made and uncomfortable. What will you do? Will you buy the boots or…
Category Archives: social validation
100 Things You Should Know About People: #13 — Want To Change a Habit? Use Fun, Surprise, and a Crowd
Have a habit that you want to change? Or maybe you are trying to change the behavior of people at work? Or you want to change the behavior of people coming to your blog or website? If you read any of the research on habits you will find that habits are hard to change. (I’ll…
Use Community to Encourage Self Service
I was speaking today with a friend/colleague about their project to try and get people to use a support website for technical help rather than call the help desk. She asked me how they could get people to use the website instead of call in. People will call in if the help desk is really…
New Research Shows Herd Behavior When Shopping Online
In my book, Neuro Web Design: What makes them click, I have a chapter on Social Validation: When we are uncertain we look to others to see what our behavior should be. Now some new research tests this idea online. In a series of research studies by Chen (see end for full reference), visitors to…