Karl Gilis: “Now most people understand that words and emotions play a very important role in e-commerce”
We had the opportunity to interview Karl Gilis, Co-Founder at AGConsult, a Belgian company specialized in usability and conversion optimization. You will meet him and other great speaker at the GPeC Summit 16-17-18 May. Hurry-up and book your Early Bird price seat now!
At last year’s edition of GPeC Summit, you spoke about treating your customer as if you were on a date with him/her. Also, some people say that you should treat your customer like it was your wife/husband or boyfriend/girlfriend, in order to seduce him/her. Do you still believe in this and why?
Yes, I still believe in the similarities. My talk wasn’t about a Tinder date, but a date with someone that you wanted to end up into a relationship with. The basic thought behind this comparison is that I really believe that you should try to build a real relation with your customers. Customer loyalty still is very important if you want to survive as a business. That’s one of the key elements in the success of companies such as Amazon, Zalando, Booking and Facebook. They all build a relationship with their customers. They’re not always the cheapest, but they are extremely good at customer satisfaction and keeping their clients happy. And if you want your relation to last forever, keeping him or her happy is important too :-).
What are the 3 main components of persuasive content for a product page of an online shop?
I think the most important thing is to make clear that you understand the problem of your potential buyer. Or what we call the dreams, hopes, fears, pains and barriers of your target audience. Why do they want that product? What problem do they want to solve? Most product pages start with features, specifications and advantages. And those are important, but we’ve seen some great wins when we start with spelling down the pains and problems of the user. Of course, the more common your product is, the more difficult this becomes.
When it comes to classical persuasion tips, these are probably my favorites:
Scarcity. I know this is so basic, but it works so good. During my talk I’ll show some inventive ways to use this, even when you’re never out of stock.
Social proof and group pressure, where you need to try to get as close the individual visitor as possible. When I’m booking a restaurant, I’m not interested what teenagers or Americans think of it. I will only trust the advice of other foodies. But not snobs who only eat in the fancy places because they’re fancy.
Encouraging your users. One of my new favorites. Just support your visitors in what they’re doing. Insert small messages in your copy (especially during check-out) like ‘excellent choice’ or ‘Yes. You’re about to save 20% if you complete your order to today’.
How do you avoid scarcity and urgency being seen as artificial incentives by the customers and not a reality reflected in your e-shop’s stock?
Good question. And it’s often an act of finding the right balance. The scary thing is that those 2 principles do work. Every time. But I believe it should be true. So don’t lie. But that doesn’t mean you have to tell everything :-). The funny thing is that users automatically make connections themselves. When Booking.com says there are only 3 rooms available, the last booking was 5 minutes ago and 10 people are looking at that hotel, your brain wants to believe those people are all looking for the same room at the same dates. So a bit of manipulation of the brain is allowed.
From your 15+ years experience, how would you say that e-commerce website optimization changed during this time?
We now have A/B testing. That’s the biggest plus for me. It allows us to test our ideas before implementing them. And what I like is that most people finally start to realize that words and content are more important than design. When I started most people thought that usability and optimization was mostly about putting the right element at the right place. Now most people understand that words and emotions play a very important role. And with text interfaces this will of course become even more important.
A lot of companies run tests periodically, but few of them try to implement changes based on the test results. Why do you think that happens?
Most marketing people hate it when tests prove their gut feeling and opinions were just -yes- opinions. So it’s often an ego thing. And then they start finding excuses:
– Yes, but what about the long term results;
– Interesting, but this is in conflict with (insert whatever poor branding excuse they can think of);
– Or the end of all conversations: you can prove anything with numbers :-).
These excuses are also often used by the managers of the e-commerce and testing teams. I’m still looking how to handle this. But yep, we often have the same problems with our clients.
You are Belgian, but you worked for international companies such as Tui, Suzuki, Atlas Copco, Shell, Suez and Thomas Cook. Can you identify 2 or 3 cultural differences that have an impact on conversions?
I haven’t seen many differences between cultures when it comes to conversions and the persuasion trick. We do see some big differences in design preferences, which sometimes makes it difficult. Even in my country, because we have a clear gap between Germanic and Romance cultures. In our case the Flemish and the French. And the further you go north or south, the bigger that difference in design preference and colour becomes.
Let’s say that a small company has a small budget that can only be spent on one of these activities: website analysis (audit) made by professionals, user testing, A/B tests. Which one of these would you say they should start with?
None of those, because I would suggest to invest in a user behavior analysis tool like Hotjar. If you insist: user testing, but also done by a very experienced team that knows how to ask the right questions.
What is the most frequent mistake in the user tests that you implemented over the years?
Of course, I never make mistakes :-) A common mistake I see with other people is that they ask the wrong questions. Many people ask questions like ‘what do you think of this’ or ‘do you like what you see’. That’s not what user testing is about. User testing is about observing people when they use a website: where do they fail, where do they succeed, what makes them happy, what makes them frustrated. So be as neutral as possible in your tasks and questions. Observe and shut up.
Back in 1996, you were building websites at Netsign. Looking at today’s e-shops’ web design, what are some important differences that drive more people to buy online?
LOL. Where did you find that? That’s a long time ago. I call it the prehistory of Internet. We had modems. Not a lot of people had Internet. So those who bought online were the nerds. Now Internet is a common thing. Something like running water and electricity. It’s part of our life. Everybody’s life. We buy everything online.
And I think the most successful online shops they have one theme in common: they want to make your life as easy as possible (OK, they also want your money).
They take away the pains of the classical shopping experience (I have to go there, find a parking space, wait for a shop assistant, wait at the counter, than they tell me it’s out of stock, go home with a big bag of goods, and all this at the same moment that everybody else in the world wants to go to the same shop) and they try to match what we like about a real shop (we can feel and see the product (= product detail shots and videos), try it (return policy), human interaction (chat etc.).
At GPeC Summit 2017 in Bucharest, you will be delivering a keynote about „How to seduce your visitors to buy (more)?” and you will conduct a workshop about conversion optimization. Please tell our readers what are the main 3 reasons why they should come and listen to you, as some of them will be there to hear you for the second time.
The talk is completely new. It’s all about persuasion, psychology and manipulation. It’s the next step: last time I talked about getting the basics right. Now we’re going to make them buy :-) The workshop will be a crash course about product page and landing page optimization. I’ll show the do’s and don’ts with lots of cases and examples. What you get at the end is a kind of blueprint of the perfect product page.
This workshop is for those who really want to win in e-commerce. I’ve heard there’s another workshop about usability at the same moment, but that’s only for those who are happy with not dying in e-commerce :-) And of course: it will be 90 minutes full of fun, bad jokes and the opportunity to ask me lots of questions.
You will have the chance to meet (again) Karl Gilis and other execeptional speakers at the GPeC SUMMIT 16-17-18 May, the most important E-Commerce event in Central and Eastern Europe. The price for a ticket is only 119 euros for all the 3 event days if you book it during our Early Bird offer until May 7, 2017, 12:59 PM. Then the price will be 159 euros. Book your seat by filling the online form on the GPeC website.
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