Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Nathalie Nahai is a web psychologist and the bestselling author of Webs of Influence: The
Psychology of Online Persuasion.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Nahai on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstien: You coined the term “Web Psychology” what’s that all about?
Nathalie Nahai: It was basically an effort to bridge a whole bunch of different disciplines
that can give us insights into how and why we behave the way that we do online. You have
heard no doubt of behavioral sciences, of neuroscience, of human computer interaction,
UX, social psychology, cultural psychology, all of these different fields and many more,
it can give us insights as to way we behave the way we do but very few people were looking
at the big picture and drawing these insights together. So I wanted to come up with a term
that was more accessible than academic jargon to bring these things under one main umbrella
and then write a book that people could get their teeth into kind of as a road map to
online behavior.
Douglas Goldstein: Who is the book written for?
Nathalie Nahai: The book is written for businesses, so large businesses, small businesses. I found
that people who tend to treat it the most at least initially with CEOs which I found
quite strange because I felt it would be more than marketers and designers and since it’s
released in 2012, it’s moved more into the marketing space and also into the conversation
rate optimization space so designer and developers wishing to increase sales and engagements
online.
Douglas Goldstein: Are normal people like victims of what you teach in your book?
Nathalie Nahai: That’s an excellent, excellent question. We do have the potentials to be
victims but what I really find interesting is that when people talk about so called users,
this kind of distance in language that we have, whether you are a designer or whoever
you might be, we forget that we are all the users no matter what tech or websites or app
or platform we develop, at some point it will collectively create a best practice principle
that will then get applied that will also be subject to. So in the book, the third part
is about how do you sell with integrity? So what does it look like to have the values
and the intentions of your customers at the heart of what you do? Any kind of persuasion
principle that we use, we have to think about mutual benefiters. I don’t think one should
ever just serve the needs of one person.
Douglas Goldstein: Do people who produce a lot of content, are they fulfilling this requirement
to develop or to present the integrity that they need compared to a lot of the garbage
that is out there?
Nathalie Nahai: I would say from that perspective there are two things to look at, the intention
and the reality. So the intention is I want to help serve people or I want to do good
business, it’s going to be so good that it’s going to benefit customers, they’re
going to want to come to me and then I’ll benefit through making long term customers
and sales and the rest of it. So there’s the intention. Then the reality of the thing
is creating enough checks and balances to make sure that you are actually delivering
on that intention. So whether that’s your creating you know loads of content or whether
it’s that you are running a conference or that you are giving really good customer service,
whatever way you are creating that value, you have to look at the intention behind it
and then whether that delivers on actually serving people as well as yourself. So that
typically is quite of helpful to have some sort of process by which you assess your output
or you assess the relationship with the customers and what they feel they’re getting in return.
A process might be for instance if you are creating an app to help people get healthier,
you might say “Okay, we are going to measure success based on the time spent on the app”
so that means that people are obviously doing something positive. However, if you are taking
the time to create checks and balance approach where you then bring in 15 of your clients
once a month and say “Okay, what are the issues that you are facing here? Is this serving
you? Is this draining your time? Is it draining your attention or actually do you feel that
there are certain benefits that you are acquiring from this as oppose to just creating a habit-forming
behavior that doesn’t have any real impact. Then you can start to assess the actual physical
real value that you are delivering to these customers. So it’s not just enough to assume,
you have to kind of have some way of assessing the real value that you are providing.
Douglas Goldstein: What’s the
difference now between the way that the art of marketing today and persuading people or
bringing them over to your idea and the way it was let’s say 15-20 years ago or 100
years ago?
Nathalie Nahai: I think there are two main changes. The first is the fact that it’s
now by directional or many or many to many as oppose to just being a broadcasting way
of saying right. It’s the billboard you are going to set and passively absorb it.
Now this we know about. What I find really interesting, the second piece is around values
and so much research has shown that the Gen-X, people roughly I mean there are some debates
to the exact age range but roughly between the ages of 18 to 25 are becoming much more
interested in buying from and engaging with companies that have values bate into their
business models. So not just a bit of corporate social responsibilities slapped on to the
side but for instance companies like Toms Shoes where within their business model they
are actually doing something for social good. I know that in the states, I think this is
called B-Commerce, the idea of benefiting a wide of group of people so it’s not just
for-profit nor is it just nonprofit, it’s kind of social responsibility within the model
and I think that that’s the thing that people are really finding that if you can create
that business model and then work from the inside out to generate that message, so any
marketing message or advertising message that’s aligned with that core value, you are much
more likely to tract people at a deeper level and get that longer term loyalty and engagement
and customer-based.
I think it’s always really good to rigorously critique whatever it is that’s presenting
itself as a kind of sale or some kind of holy grail but I think what’s interesting is
that we are all finding like we did in the food industry when people started coming out
with organic we are all finding similar desires or trends towards figuring out a way to do
this within tech, I think marketing is perhaps slightly later. So the idea of B-Commerce
or the idea of Tech for Good is somehow figuring out a way to label companies and technologies
that are serving people at a more values-based level without profit being the main motivator
or data mining being the great motivator so that people can differentiate between one
type of service and approach and another so we can make wiser choices that are aligned
with our goals so how do we help people to live more fulfilling lives? Well maybe in
that case let’s choose this sort of tech which I know has certain approaches backed
into it, so giving people the choice to make that decision.
Douglas Goldstein: I think one of the other areas of the technology being broad into the
relationship between the company and the consumer is that it simply becomes, it seems like a
much more sterile connection which is also, it means there’s not real personal interaction
and it’s very easy to switch from one to the other so I would think from a corporate
standpoint, maintaining customers when your business has just been commoditized instead
of your personal service, it must be much more difficult.
Nathalie Nahai: Yes I think so and I think what’s interesting there is looking at how
businesses are seeming to diversify away from just content but also lived experiences so
things like running conference or creating meet ups or kind of events that people can
come to that they’ll invite some of the maybe longer term customers to come and experience
what it’s like to be in relationship with them, present with them, to go through something
together, to create that connection and I think this is something that we are seeing
on a wider basis, so looking at the cross movement or looking at a more sort of tribal
approach to creating smaller conferences or smaller festivals. There seems to be a longing
and a desire to kind of connect with people at a deeper, more visceral, more embodied
way and I think that’s something that we see across many different countries in various
spheres.
There’s an interesting piece of research I was reading the
other day about Skype meetings and so technology-mediated interactions of people. This research is basically
saying that we tend to recall less information from a Skype meeting than we do from in-person
meeting. So you think “Okay, well I’m having this interview with you via Skype and
we are communicating. I wonder how that’s influencing maybe the quality of our attention
or the depth of our conversation” or whatever that might be. There are certain things, certain
barriers to overcome with tech-mediated communication but I think as technology improves, we’ll
be able to deal with those head on.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people learn more about you and follow your work?
Nathalie Nahai: Great, well you can find me on Twitter @nathalienahai. I’m also at the
www.webpsychologist.com and if you want to learn more about how to harness persuasive
technology for good, I’m also running a conference in London called Humanize the Web
which
is www.humanizetheweb.com.