Designing for Persuasion, Emotion, and Trust (PET) is going beyond the usability’s Can Do factor to designing incentives for Will Do and Still Do. These three Do factors of PET can be defined as:
- Can Do (can users easily navigate and find info)
- Will Do (will users act on the info and press buttons)
- Still Do (will they come back to do it again and again)
PET research has provided the following 7 principles for designing to persuade, provide emotion and build trust, so your users Do:
- Don’t overwhelm: If people have too many choices they will not choose at all – they freeze. This is a consideration for when adding functionality and features.
- Social validation: This is why ratings and reviews are so powerful. Also why peer reviews are more influential than experts.
- Scarcity: Less available items become more valuable (only 3 items left / only 4 more days to order), because they create the fear of loss.
- Food, sex, or danger: Not appropriate for all sites, though if content lead s itself to these, they are powerful triggers for action.
- Power of faces: There is a part of the brain that is reserved for only processing faces. People especially focus on the eyes.
- Stories: The brain processes information best in story form. For example Facebooks’s wall and Twitter’s ‘what’s happening’.
- Commitment: Ask for small commitments and over time they become loyal fans of your site/product/service.
Want more info? View the quick sketch video on PET or we can stop by for a quick site critique on PET’s seven principals. Just give Susana at FluidUI a holler, 816-561-2315.