Nudging - Nudge your customers toward the right decision

Do you want to get more of your customers to convert? With the help of nudging you can nudge your customers toward the right decision or a more desirable behavior - here we explain how it works!

We humans usually want to make good, conscious choices, but that's easier said than done. Most of us know, for example, that it's good for our health to be active and to eat well, but the workout doesn't happen and it's hard to choose the salad over the piece of meat or the cake. Often we think we're making rational decisions when in fact we are largely influenced by our emotions and inner drives. The fact is that many of our everyday decisions are made out of habit - we switch on autopilot or do what everyone else does.

But what does this actually have to do with the digital customer journey? Well, when we find ourselves in the borderland between intention and action, for example when we're faced with the choice of choosing the salad over the piece of meat, we may need a nudge in the right direction to change our behavior. This is also where companies have the opportunity to influence their customers' behavior toward a more desirable one. If we know how and why people behave in a certain way or make decisions in different situations, we can design choice situations that make it easier for our customers/users to make decisions. And this is where nudging comes in as a method to improve the user experience of our product or service and nudge our customers in the right direction. To enable you to use the method, we thought we'd tell you a little more about what it entails.

 

What is nudging

Nudging is a tool for behavior change where the goal is for a person to make better choices and select one option over another. It's not about removing freedom of choice or forcing anything on anyone or telling them what is right or wrong. Rather, it simplifies the different choices people face or makes certain options more attractive with the aim of steering people in a different direction. In short, you could say it's about making it easy to do the right thing.

The method became a widely discussed concept when Richard Thaler was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017, having launched the theory that we could all become better people if we just received a nudge. Since then, policymakers, governments and companies have successfully adopted the method, but it's said that it all really started with a fly in a urinal.

"By knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society" - Richard Thaler

A fly in a urinal

Staff at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam grew tired of toilet visitors urinating outside the urinals and wanted men to aim better. They therefore tried placing a sticker in the shape of a fly on the inside of the urinal. The result was that visitors tried to hit the fly and thus urine spillage decreased by as much as 80% while cleaning costs were reduced. With a simple sticker, a so‑called "nudge" or gentle push, the staff had managed to change one behaviour into another, more desirable one.

There are more examples where people have managed to change behaviours through a simple nudge. Restaurants have tried changing the order of the menu and placing the vegetarian dishes at the top, and in this way got more people to choose vegetarian. In Denmark they have tested sending messages together with the tax return, stating that a certain percentage of people in your area submit their returns on time. The result was that more people filed on time. We humans don’t want to be worse than anyone else, so if “everyone else” does something there’s a good chance we’ll do the same ourselves

Nudging on the web

In e-commerce it is becoming increasingly common to show customer reviews for products to persuade (nudge) potential customers to make a purchase decision. If we see that others have been satisfied with a product, it can be the final little nudge we need to actually click the buy button. There is also an inherent FOMO (fear of missing out) in people that companies take advantage of. Releasing something in a limited edition or running an offer for a limited time are such examples. How many of us haven't bought something in the "Buy 3 pay for 2" campaign even though we didn't need three of that particular item. Hotels.com makes frequent use of nudging by pointing out how popular our destination or dates are. To avoid missing out on a popular place to stay we have to act immediately. When we get offers our reptile brain perks up and tells us that we must “Seize the chance - leave no prey behind, you never know when you'll manage to catch another”.

"21 people are viewing this property right now"

"We have 1 room left at this price"

"97% of our accommodations are booked for your travel dates"

 

Another effective nudge is defaults, where the desired behavior is made the default. One example is when one visually highlights one of several options, for instance the most common or most popular product. Because we don't always have the energy to figure out what is best for us, we tend to perceive the default as a recommendation. Several of the major mobile operators often default the data allowance and contract length. Because you don't need to make an active choice if you don't want to, all you need to do is click the buy button.

Nudging doesn't guarantee a certain outcome, but it increases the likelihood that someone will make a particular choice. If the individual benefits or personally gains from the nudge, for example by saving money, they are more likely to accept it. If nudges are perceived as manipulation they can instead have the opposite effect. In the mobile operator example, nothing has therefore been removed and free choice has not been restricted; only the most desirable option has been set as the default.

3 quick reasons why you should invest in nudging:

1. Nudging focuses on identifying behaviors. Once we know these, we can then influence and change a behavior to a more desirable one
   
   
2. Nudging makes choice situations easier. We simplify decisions and reduce unnecessary friction and in this way increase motivation and get more satisfied customers
   
   
3. Nudging can reduce costs and increase profitability for your company. Small cost-effective nudges can have a big effect – if used in the right way

How to get started using nudging

If you learn to identify the underlying factors that influence how we humans make decisions, you can use the insights to create behaviour change with the help of nudging. Here are some tips on how you can get started:

 

Identify the area you want to change

If you want to change a behaviour you must first identify the area you want to change. Think, for example, of a person who wants to start exercising but never gets going. What obstacles do they experience and what affects the choice — is it the distance to the gym or new workout clothes? It is only when we know and understand the obstacles and the circumstances that we can design solutions.

 

Understand human behavior - help our inner lazybones

You need to get to know your users by understanding human behavior. Even though we live in a modern digitized society, we still make decisions based on instincts that remain from hunter‑gatherer times. Humans strive to rest and conserve energy for hunting for food or fleeing from danger. Our inner lazybones naturally leads us to take the escalator instead of the stairs to save energy until it is really needed. Even when we use digital products and services and face different choice situations, we act out of habit or to conserve energy. We are herd animals who like to do as everyone else does. But the positive thing is that humans have a unique capacity for adaptation, and our behaviours can be changed with a small nudge in the right direction.

Simplify choice situations – make it easy to do the right thing

If you understand how people act and know which behaviors influence our choices, you can ease various decision situations. If you can minimize unnecessary friction that doesn't add any positive value for the customer, you're well on your way. By making certain choices simpler and clearer, your customers can avoid having to shoulder all the responsibility for "choosing correctly". That way you can nudge your visitors toward a more desirable behavior, just like the fly in the urinal or customer reviews on an e-commerce site. You simply have to make it easy to do the right thing and subtly convince your customers why one option is better than the other.

How Limetta can help you

With the help of nudging we can design choice situations that help your customers break ingrained patterns and create new behaviours. While we want to reduce unnecessary friction for the user, at Limetta we always try to take a responsible approach when designing and developing products/services for our clients - a kind of digital care that benefits both people and business. There are actually occasions when a little friction can be beneficial, if used the right way

Through an analysis of the current situation we can identify potential obstacles. For example, we can find out what makes your customers not complete a purchase – do they get stuck somewhere along the way? We can also find out what triggers and motivates them - what influences their choices? By structuring information and components and designing elements so we minimise unnecessary friction, we can also make it easy to do the right thing. In our article "4 tips to improve your web content" you can read more about how you can capture your visitors' attention with the right content

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