Planet Mark

Figured I'd join the blogging... the first in a series of posts which will hopefully get people thinking about various topics, including photocopier queues.

Surprisingly very average queues in typical workplaces to use unremarkable photocopier machines have a lot to do with your business.

To understand why we need to go back in time to 1978 and look at a fascinating experiment carried out by a leading Harvard social psychologist called Ellen Langer. This involved trying to jump ahead of queues while holding 5 pages which supposedly needed to be copied.

Now different approaches were attempted - here is a high level summary:

- I Have 5 pages, May I Use The Copier? (this was successful 60% of the time)
- I Have 5 Pages, May I Use The Copier As I Am In A Hurry? (94% success rate)
- I Have 5 Pages, May I Use The Copier As I Have To Make Some Copies? (93% successful here)

The conclusion, and a conclusion which has been replicated in many situations and geos, is startling. Adding a reason to the request dramatically increased success rate regardless of what that reason was....

Thats all very nice Mark (I hear you all say), but we are a little too occupied with running a business to ponder photocopier queues too much!

Well, it has a lot to do with our businesses... more specifically with those 'calls to action' which we use to direct visitors around our sites and specifically get them to click our affiliate links. We all have them right - some stronger and some more subtle.

What the photocopier experiment tells me is that we need to pair our calls with reasons wherever this is appropriate. Instead of 'Click Here To Visit Poker Stars Now!' we should try 'Click Here To Visit Poker Stars Now And See / Try / Claim / Enjoy' (just tie the reason in with your page).

The difference between 60% and 93% was enough to convince me (tests ongoing), and the best thing of all is that you do not even need to sound too ' salesey ' or 'un-natural' in your copy.

Cheers, Mark

PS: Happy to debate / disagree... it makes life more interesting.

Link Bit... If you thought SNG Planet was awsome in English then the Russian version will blow your cotton socks off - Онлайн покер турниры