Podcast Overview
Richard Hill sits down with Roger Dooley, the behavioural science author and neuromarketing expert behind Brainfluence, Friction and his latest book The Persuasion Engine. He unpacks why 95% of purchase decisions happen below the level of conscious thought and what that means for how eCommerce brands sell, price and design their checkout.
Roger walks through the research behind non-conscious buying triggers, including a countdown timer test that lifted conversion by 15% simply by creating urgency. He shares the JCPenney story of what happened when former CEO Ron Johnson stripped out discounts in favour of “everyday fair pricing”. Disclosure, sales collapsed within three quarters, the company nearly went bankrupt, and the old markdown strategy was reinstated almost overnight.
From there the conversation turns to friction, including Amazon’s one-click ordering patent, the legal fight with Barnes & Noble that followed, and Steve Jobs paying Amazon $1 million just to license one click for the original iTunes Store. Richard also brings in a live example from an eComOne client, where removing guest checkout in favour of forced account creation quietly killed conversions on low-value orders.
This isn’t a polished highlight reel of marketing hacks. It’s a genuinely practical breakdown of where eCommerce brands are losing sales without realising it, from pricing pages that anchor on the wrong number, to product pages stuffed with logical features and missing the emotional cues that actually move people to buy.
Along the way, Roger and Richard cover a wide range of themes including, how AI tracking tools can now show exactly where customers look on a page for the cost of a coffee, what actually makes a testimonial credible, the psychology of price colour and anchoring, and a live experiment showing that AI-written customer messages were rated more empathetic than human-written ones, until people knew which was which.
Roger also shares the lesson in trust and community he took from co-founding College Confidential and a sobering AI case study involving a Starbucks Korea promotion that went badly wrong.
If you’re running a scaling eCommerce brand and want to understand exactly why customers hesitate, what actually gets them to act, and how to make the buying journey easier without giving away margin, this episode is packed with actionable insights.
Listen to the full episode now, and don’t forget to hit subscribe.
Topics Covered
00:00 – Cold open: friction vs persuasion, and the psychology of pricing
02:33 – Why 95% of purchase decisions happen unconsciously (Gerald Zaltman’s research)
04:23 – How buying psychology shifts across industrial machinery, fragrance and apparel
05:01 – Applying non-conscious triggers to fashion and clothing brands
06:04 – The countdown timer test that lifted conversion by 15%
07:59 – The JCPenney story: what happened when Ron Johnson killed the markdowns
10:19 – Why “friction” might be the most important word in eCommerce
10:42 – Amazon’s one-click patent, the Barnes & Noble lawsuit and Steve Jobs’ $1 million payout
12:55 – How Amazon turned painless returns into a loyalty weapon
17:43 – The guest checkout mistake costing a client conversions right now
18:25 – Why account creation is a top-five cart abandonment killer
18:38 – Inside The Persuasion Engine and its three pillars of “neuromarketing 2.0”
21:23 – AI eye-tracking that predicts where customers look with up to 95% accuracy
21:38 – Roger’s own homepage fix: the invisible call-to-action link
23:54 – AI eye-tracking tools worth trying: Feng Gui, Neurons Inc and Expose.io
25:16 – Levelling up social proof beyond star ratings
26:35 – The testimonial details that make or break credibility
27:39 – Borrowing authority: when a customer’s logo does the selling
29:05 – The psychology of pricing: red price tags and the anchoring effect
33:08 – Quickfire round: friction vs persuasion, product page mistakes, AI vs human copywriters, discounts vs trust, and the brand nailing behavioural science
36:16 – What building College Confidential taught Roger about community and trust
38:03 – Roger’s 3-year prediction for AI and e-commerce marketing
38:59 – The Starbucks Korea “Tank Day” disaster, and how an AI empathy audit could have caught it
41:41 – Book recommendation: Cialdini’s Influence
42:33 – Where to find Roger Dooley
Richard Hill [00:00:00]:
My understanding is you argue that 95% of purchase decisions happen unconsciously.
Roger Dooley [00:00:04]:
I think that's the fundamental thing that marketers have to realize, that in addition to presenting your product in its best light, you really have to figure out what other non-conscious psychological triggers are going to move your customers to act.
Richard Hill [00:00:18]:
Friction or persuasion, which kills more revenue for scaling e-commerce brands?
Roger Dooley [00:00:23]:
I would say friction simply because it's That's, that's a preventer. Persuasion is a motivator.
Richard Hill [00:00:30]:
What are some of the biggest sort of pricing mistakes you see with e-com brands?
Roger Dooley [00:00:35]:
The way you present prices is important. People create an anchor in their brain. The first price they see is the anchor. And then when you see lower prices, they seem lower.
Richard Hill [00:00:50]:
Hey everyone, Richard Hill here. Welcome back to another Ecom at One podcast. Today I'm joined by Roger Dooley, author, speaker, and one of the leading voices in behavioral science and neuromarketing. Now, in this episode, we get into what it really takes to drive buying decisions, why so much of customer behavior happens below the conscious level, and how e-commerce brands can use that understanding to improve conversions. Now, Roger shares some brilliant insights on reducing friction, using social proof properly, creating urgency without damaging trust and making pricing and product pages work so much harder. We talk about how AI is changing behavioral science, eye tracking, customer communication, and why human judgment still matters more than ever. So if you want to understand why customers hesitate, what gets them to act, and how to make your buying journey easier, there's loads and loads in this one. Now do me one quick favor.
Richard Hill [00:01:48]:
Wherever you're listening to this episode, hit the subscribe button and I'll see you on the inside. Hey Roger, how you doing?
Roger Dooley [00:01:56]:
I'm doing great, Richard. Thanks for having me on the show.
Richard Hill [00:01:59]:
No problem at all. No problem at all. I'm looking forward to, to getting stuck in and having a good chat, having a good chat. So let's get into it. So, um, I think, um, obviously you've been the author of several books and, um, you know, I have to admit I haven't read them all, Roger. I do apologize. But I'm looking forward to—
Roger Dooley [00:02:17]:
That's a flaw that can be corrected, Richard. I'm sure.
Richard Hill [00:02:22]:
I'm sure. No, I am a big reader, to be fair. So I think when I get you back on in 12 months, if you do a good job, I will have read them all. So, but my understanding is you argue that 95% of purchase decisions happen unconsciously. If that's true, I think most e-commerce brands are marketing maybe that 5% wrong. Walk our listeners through what they're missing and how you can fix it.
Roger Dooley [00:02:50]:
Right. Well, that number comes from Gerald Zaltman of Harvard who says that 95% of our decision-making processes are non-conscious. And as marketers, you know, we tend to focus on features and benefits, why our product is better than the competition or its unique aspects and whatnot. And that's fine. And that's obviously important. People have to know the product's for them. It's gonna work and do what they want and so on. But so much of the decision-making process is not just emotional, emotion is part of it, but also simply cognitive biases, subconscious drivers that really shape how we behave that we aren't aware of.
Roger Dooley [00:03:26]:
And in fact, most people would deny affect their behavior at all. Well, they'll admit that other people could be affected by these things, but not them. They're totally rational decision-makers. So, you know, that's, I think that's the fundamental thing that marketers have to realize that in addition to presenting your product in its best light, you really have to figure out what other non-conscious psychological triggers are going to move your customers to act. Now, it varies by product. If you're selling industrial machinery, that's a very logical sort of rational product. There is still emotion though, because there you're really, you're not just selling your product, you're selling job security, you're selling promotion, avoiding disaster and so on to the buyer. If you're selling fragrances, that's much more about emotion.
Roger Dooley [00:04:16]:
You're showing people romantic pictures, pictures of people they'd like to be or be with and so on. But I think if you look at e-commerce, there is a lot of work done using non-conscious drivers. And if you look at the successful companies certainly doing it, they're using things like social proof, or scarcity or reciprocation, liking, all these little triggers to get people to be more likely to act.
Richard Hill [00:04:47]:
Yeah. Yeah. What would you say, I'm trying to think of maybe a couple of niches where, you know, you talk there, you know, industrial machinery, yet quite different to fragrances. What about clothing, you know, and sort of fashion brands? What sort of things could our This is look out there.
Roger Dooley [00:05:08]:
Well, that's— it's a classic case there because obviously, the product has to have certain characteristics that the customer is looking for. It's got to be in their size. It's got to fit and so on. It'll probably be in a style they're looking for. But after that, there is a lot of non-conscious stuff going on. You know, how will people view me when I'm wearing this? So, the way you picture it can be important. The setting, if you're Some brands will tend to show their clothing in specific settings. If you're selling some kind of more elegant clothing, you're going to show it in formal settings with beautiful people around you and so on.
Roger Dooley [00:05:45]:
If you're selling beachwear, you're going to show it at the beach or settings like that. And you're showing people you can be part of this scene if you're wearing our clothing. And of course, the traditional triggers used by all e-commerce companies work with apparel and everything else. In fact, I remember one study that showed that simply having a countdown timer for next-day shipping increased conversion rate on that product by 15%.
Richard Hill [00:06:10]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:06:12]:
There was— it wasn't— that was the only difference. Either they presented the product with or without that countdown timer. And the countdown timer wasn't really— didn't affect the price or anything. It wasn't an expiring sale.
Richard Hill [00:06:22]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:06:23]:
But just the fact that timer was there created that little sense of urgency. And of course, you've got social proof in the form of reviews for the product. Sometimes customers talking about it and so on. Or if you're selling branded apparel, you might even have a celebrity endorser. That's authority.
Richard Hill [00:06:42]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:06:42]:
Cialdini's authority and so on. So, there are lots of ways that you can sell apparel that way. And apparel is a good example because there is an emotional component to it. You're wearing clothes. And, that's how people are going to view you. So, that's got more undertones maybe than more mechanical products. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:07:04]:
I think it's a trickier one or one that has probably a lot more options, shall we say. Like you're saying, I think time is interesting. That's the same for everything really potentially, that sort of deadline. I actually ordered something last night. Was it? Yeah, last night. And, it was quite late in the evening. But I ordered it because I really want to. And, you know, it said if you order within an hour and 45 minutes, you'll get it tomorrow.
Richard Hill [00:07:27]:
Because when I get home tonight in about an hour and a half's time, I want to use that product. Whereas if it didn't have the timer on it, I wouldn't have the confidence maybe that I'm gonna receive it tomorrow because it was very late in the evening. It was probably like 9 PM last night, 9:30 PM. So the timer really made a difference. That wasn't a clothing item actually. That was something for my garden, but it really did make the difference between me buying it and not buying it. Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:07:52]:
Well, you know, expiring sales are a great motivator for people to buy. You know, there's a real-world experiment conducted years ago by JCPenney. I, in fact, I just recorded a podcast with Ron Johnson, who was the CEO at the time. He was basically the creator of the Apple Store. He worked with Steve Jobs on creating and designing the Apple Store. Tremendous track record in retail, total phenomenon. And JCPenney, the big primarily apparel, some housewares and stuff, but primarily apparel retailer with physical stores and e-commerce, brought him in to turn them around because they were just kind of flailing. They weren't doing well in the marketplace.
Roger Dooley [00:08:33]:
Department stores in general were not doing well. And he decided, okay, here's your problem. You've got all your stuff marked up at these crazy high prices. And you never sell at that price. Everything is always 40% off or 50% off. I mean, every single week you're sending out these sale flyers with markdowns. He says, this is crazy. What if we just told customers that we're going to give you the best price all the time? You come into our store or buy online, it's going to be the best price.
Roger Dooley [00:09:02]:
And there was some logic in that. You don't see Apple running these crazy kinds of sales, right? No, no, no. Well, as it turned out, Uh, they implemented this and some other changes too in the retail stores that made the aisles bigger and so on. But, uh, their sales absolutely tanked. Uh, and within about 3 quarters, uh, they were almost on the verge of bankruptcy. And ultimately, uh, uh, he, uh, was replaced by the old CEO who brought back the giant 50% off sales immediately and sales recovered at that point. Uh, it wasn't a, it wasn't a long-term fix for the company's fundamental problems. But it just illustrated the importance of that scarcity clue.
Roger Dooley [00:09:44]:
Scarcity is one of Cialdini's 7 principles, and it can mean there's only a limited supply of something or there's only limited time to buy it. There's some kind of limitation that you need to act now, and it creates that urgency that creates fear of missing out.
Richard Hill [00:09:58]:
Yeah, I think that is the one, isn't it? That sort of fear of missing out that seems to be Yeah, but still I see a lot of merchants not using this, you know, not using these sort of strategies, shall we say. So obviously going back to, I think one of your favorite words possibly, Roger, friction. So obviously you wrote the book on friction. So your book about sort of removing resistance rather than adding incentives potentially to e-com brands. Give us a real-world example. Where sort of killing friction outperformed giving discounts?
Roger Dooley [00:10:38]:
Well, I think there's probably no better example than the biggest e-commerce company out there, Amazon. Their entire ethos is making things as easy as possible for the customer. They very early on, they patented one-click ordering and where you could see a product and click the buy now button and they would immediately send it, you know, to the warehouse for fulfillment and be on its way to you. And a lot of companies thought you can't patent something that simple. That's just a, you know, it's just a buy now button. And others decided to try implementing it. Barnes Noble then, they were the big bookseller, implemented something very similar on their website. And they got in a big legal fight with Amazon over this.
Roger Dooley [00:11:23]:
And Amazon said, no, we have a patent on that. And after millions of dollars in expense, And countless management hours trying to deal with this legal mess, Amazon won. Their patent was declared valid. So for the 17-year run or whatever it is of the patent, they had unique access to that feature or they could license it to somebody else. And so what Barnes Noble had to do was add one little click, just one tiny click to their order flow. After you've clicked the Buy Now, They click, say confirm order, and that's it. You know, it does not seem like that one tiny click would be worth millions of dollars, but it was. And in fact, at the same time, Steve Jobs was about, he was starting up the new iTunes store.
Roger Dooley [00:12:09]:
He saw one click and he said, hey, okay, we want that. They didn't argue with Amazon. They didn't fight the patent. They paid Amazon $1 million so they could have that one-click advantage over their competitors. And it seems like an inconsequential amount of effort. And if you look at people's workflows, I mean, some e-commerce companies, e-commerce companies are getting smarter about that. But even like, look at financial, like banks and whatnot. Some of their workflows for customers opening an account are crazy.
Roger Dooley [00:12:38]:
There's so much effort, so many clicks.
Richard Hill [00:12:39]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:12:40]:
And every time there's some step in there, it's going to reduce the conversion rate. So, I think that's their ethos. In fact, Jeff Bezos himself said that when you reduce friction, make something easy, people do more of it. And of course, that applies to everything. They even did that with returns. Now, in the e-commerce business, one thing that people absolutely hate are returns. Returns are expensive. You've got to deal with, first of all, the customer service aspects of it.
Roger Dooley [00:13:11]:
Then you've got this product coming back in. You've got to do something with it. It may be damaged or— not saleable. I mean, returns are a nightmare. I was in the direct mail business for a while long ago, just as e-commerce was coming into vogue, and I hated returns. But Amazon said, okay. And so, what a lot of companies did, including us way back then, was we had a process for returns. You couldn't just send it back.
Roger Dooley [00:13:35]:
You had to get a number and return authorization. And we added a little bit of friction to that process.
Richard Hill [00:13:40]:
Yeah, RMA number.
Roger Dooley [00:13:42]:
Right. Yes. But what Amazon said was, no, we're, we're going to make this process as easy as possible. And they did. They made it so that you could easily return an item. You, with a couple of clicks on their website where you ordered the product, you could return, you can drop it off at many different kinds of locations for free. In the US, we have Whole Foods stores where you drop it off for free or UPS stores. They—
Richard Hill [00:14:08]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:14:09]:
provide multiple ways to do that and make it as effortless as possible. They have lockers too, where you could drop it off. I don't know if they still use those as much, but they make it very simple, which is counterintuitive to every instinct that an e-commerce company has. We don't want more returns. But they knew that if they made even that part of their business, doing business with them easy, that people would come back again and again. And I do.
Richard Hill [00:14:31]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:14:32]:
I mean, if I'm buying something, I look at another site. And I say, okay, if this doesn't work, you know, if this shirt doesn't fit, how do I return it? And I look at their process and okay, well, you go online, you have to drop it off at the post office after you box it up or something. I look at Amazon, you just take the thing into Whole Foods, which is about 5 minutes away from my house. And they'll do it in like 3 seconds. You know, it's like, no, why would I do that? Even if the other company is cheaper.
Richard Hill [00:15:01]:
And you're probably going to pay more for that, won't you? You're probably you'll probably pay more for that just for the convenience, a little bit more. You know, there's a bit of elasticity in the price that you're willing to pay knowing that if there's any issue, you know, in the, in here in the UK, it's probably the same. You know, it's most Amazon orders you can have returned from your house, you know, just come and fetch it as well.
Roger Dooley [00:15:21]:
Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:15:22]:
So it's just so easy.
Roger Dooley [00:15:22]:
That's great. And, you know, it's, yeah, the, I know my wife was just fighting that. She bought some kind of apparel product at another company because they were the only ones that had it. It was their brand. She couldn't get it at Amazon. And once she got it, it didn't fit. And now she's going through this arduous return process where they had to charge her $10 for a shipping label and she had to box it up herself. And I've got to drop it off at some shipping place.
Roger Dooley [00:15:49]:
And it's like, after that, she says, I'm never going to do this again. I'm just going to keep buying from Amazon.
Richard Hill [00:15:55]:
So, I think that's some brilliant examples. And I think that word friction, You know, when we're thinking about the listeners that are listening with us now, it's a real keyword, isn't it? In that, you know, when you're thinking about improving your e-commerce brand, your e-commerce, you know, somebody's coming to your website to find something, you know, and ultimately check out and, you know, and retain that client. If you can reduce that friction and those potential frictions on the site, you're gonna have a lot more happy customers that are gonna start their journey experience with you.
Roger Dooley [00:16:29]:
Well, I'll only point one thing, you know, Amazon, one good thing about Amazon's one-click ordering is that they have no cart abandonment when you click that button because there's no cart. It goes directly in for fulfillment. And, you know, cart abandonment even today is still a big problem for most e-commerce companies if they're using traditional model because people get that far.
Richard Hill [00:16:54]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:16:55]:
But then, They go, oh geez, I have to set up an account. Oh my God, go find my credit card that's in the other room. And all these things. Now, things are getting easier. Now, my browser remembers some of that information for me. I don't have to go hunting for the physical card anymore. But regardless, the more you can streamline that checkout process, reduce the clicks, reduce the form fields, you're going to have lower cart abandonment.
Richard Hill [00:17:20]:
Yeah, it's huge, isn't it? I think I still see it now. I was looking at a client of ours that's having some challenges. commercially a few weeks ago. And, you know, fundamentally there was a flaw with the checkout, you know, which my team had asked to have fixed and so forth. But there was a sort of a development delay, quite a long development delay. But ultimately you had to, you know, you had to create an account. They'd removed like a guest checkout. You had to create an account for something that was quite low value, you know, £20, £30, you know, $30, $40 rather than just check out as a guest.
Richard Hill [00:17:54]:
You couldn't check out as a guest. So you had to fill in the form to become a client, you know, to become a customer. And it was like, what? You know, huge, huge piece of friction, which is just not going to make things very easy. And I think that's the name of the game is they're making things easy for people. So, it's pretty just super straightforward. Click, click, click. Here I go. Right.
Richard Hill [00:18:13]:
Back to doing what I was doing and wait 24 hours or less for the product.
Roger Dooley [00:18:19]:
Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:18:19]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:18:20]:
And from what I've seen in the research, setting up an account is one of the top 5 reasons why people abandon their cart, forcing them to set up an account. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:18:33]:
So obviously, you've written a few books. The Persuasion Engine says brands can now run eye tracking studies for the cost of a coffee. So, you know, if we're thinking about our listeners that are sort of looking at that, you know, break that down for them, what brands right now could do in the next few days, next week or two.
Roger Dooley [00:18:54]:
Okay, well, the whole idea of the book Persuasion Engine is that we're now entering what I call neuromarketing 2.0 with 3 main pillars. One is cheaper neuromarketing tools that include things like biometrics and eye tracking, as well as some conventional measurements. The second is AI-powered behavioral science interventions, where instead of having to understand and have read all of Cialdini's work and Kahneman and Ariely and my stuff, you can have AI help you with that process. And then the third part is empathetic and emotional communication with customers. It doesn't matter if it's a routine customer notice that, hey, your order's delayed, or some important announcement that, hey, we're going to start charging for shipping, which would be probably poorly received by most customers if you haven't been charging for shipping. But those are the 3 pillars. Now, the one you're bringing up, I think, is one very exciting thing because, you know, in e-commerce, since it's online, we're always trying to evaluate what are people seeing when they come to the website, when they look at the product page, what are they seeing? And traditionally, to make those kinds of measurements, you had to recruit subjects, bring them into a lab setting where you would then outfit them with special expensive glasses or put sensors below a monitor screen. And see where they were looking as they glanced around your page.
Roger Dooley [00:20:20]:
Maybe you give them instruction, hey, I want you to buy a shirt or something, and then see them hunt around. Okay, well, where's shirts? How do I choose? And so on. Now, there's technology— 2 technologies have come to simplify that. The first is you can use device cams, like on your phone or your webcam, for that purpose. The resolution is not nearly as good, but they can give you usable results that are statistically somewhat reliable. And you can also now use AI simulations of where humans will look. They've used machine learning. Now, this is different than generative AI like ChatGPT.
Roger Dooley [00:21:03]:
This is machine learning where they've trained AI models on thousands of human eye tracking studies. Like, okay, given this print ad or this webpage, where did people look as using the expensive glasses or sensors? And then AI learns what people look at in pictures and it can predict now with 90 and even 95% accuracy where real humans will look on your print ad or your webpage or whatever. And that's very, very powerful because you can, run these tests in just seconds. I found on my own homepage, I had a call to action. Now, this wasn't my personal website, is more just as an information site for people looking for info about me. It's not a site geared for high level of conversion, but I did have a little call to action for speaking on the homepage, like to find out more. And what I found by doing these AI-based eye-tracking studies was that little call-to-action line was almost invisible. It was a blue link, and the blue link got lost amidst the big bold headlines, the picture, sort of hero picture of me, if you can imagine that, and then some logos of places that I've spoken and whatnot.
Roger Dooley [00:22:22]:
All that stuff was far more visually interesting than that little blue link.
Richard Hill [00:22:26]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:22:26]:
And in Like 30 minutes, I ran a whole series of just quick tests. I used Canva, I had a screenshot and just said, okay, let's make the type bigger. Let's add a little graphic there and whatnot. And in about 4 iterations, I had one that was finally one of the things that people would see. In fact, like maybe the second thing people might look at after the photo. People always look at pictures of, if there's a face in the picture, even mine or yours, they'll look at that first before any of the text. But that was, that was so simple. And to me, it was very logical too.
Roger Dooley [00:22:58]:
When I looked at it, I doubted that a human eye tracking study would have yielded any significantly different results.
Richard Hill [00:23:06]:
Yeah. So what did you, so did you increase the font size of the call to action then?
Roger Dooley [00:23:13]:
Yeah. I, you know, I didn't do the most visible one because that wasn't really the purpose of it with the website. But I did, I did make the type larger. And added a very subtle little, I think I put an emoji or a little graphic or something next to it just for a little more, make it more visible. If somebody is looking for that information, they'll find it. And it's not meant to be, you know, like a giant buy now button, but it's, I felt made it more visible.
Richard Hill [00:23:40]:
Make it more visible.
Roger Dooley [00:23:41]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:23:43]:
I think the thing is, is there's so many sort of new tools and especially with AI, you know, coming out now. when it comes to sort of AI sort of tools and tools that can help. So it's sort of finding good ones, isn't it? I think any specific recommendations that you'd recommend at the moment that sort of that you're seeing maybe your clients are using or you're hearing good things about with the sort of with this piece?
Roger Dooley [00:24:09]:
Well, with the sort of neuromarketing tools, You know, I think there are, for the studies like I was mentioning, there are probably about 5 or 6 vendors who offer these AI studies. And I think they have different skills, different pricing plans and whatnot. Some are geared more toward big companies, some toward smaller ones.
Richard Hill [00:24:34]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:24:34]:
But a few that come to mind, and I hate to leave anybody out, but Feng Gui, G-U-I, Feng Gui, if you will, It was sort of a play on Feng Shui. They're quite good that I've used them. Neurons Inc. has one and they're very experienced in a whole panoply of high-level neuromarketing stuff, including the classic lab studies. So they're good. There's another Expose.io. And these also work on videos, by the way. I know e-commerce companies don't use as much video as some, but you can use these tools not just on still images or screenshots, But on videos.
Richard Hill [00:25:10]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:25:11]:
Good, good.
Richard Hill [00:25:12]:
We'll link those up in the show notes. So social proof, big, big, probably one of the biggest, most powerful persuasion triggers, I think, you know, real, really, really important. But most e-commerce brands, I think, use reviews. But what maybe are they doing wrong? What else should they be adding for social proof for sort of product pages and so forth?
Roger Dooley [00:25:36]:
Well, social proof is probably the most frequently used of Cialdini's 7 principles. And I think even before he enumerated those principles 42 years ago, people were doing it. They would either show how many customers they have, like, you know, we've got thousands of customers in this city or millions of users or, you know, whatever. And, or have testimonials from their customers who said, oh, these guys did a great job for me, or this product was wonderful. And so, it's been a through line in marketing for the last probably 100 years. Probably back in Roman times, they had somebody saying, yeah, I use this guy. He's great.
Richard Hill [00:26:19]:
Yeah, yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:26:20]:
But I think that the ways that you amp it up, there are a few things you can do to really amp it up. Like any sort of testimonial is a good testimonial. If a customer posts a review and you say, you feature that review about the good experience they had. But a few things that you can do is, first of all, make sure the customer is identifiable. If you've just got 2 initials there for the customer's name, then that looks like, well, maybe the company just wrote it themselves. It could be fake.
Richard Hill [00:26:48]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:26:49]:
So, if you put a name or a name and a location, hey, you know, this is Roger Dooley in Austin, Texas said this about it. Okay. Yes. That's something that helps. If you put their photo there, then that's even more believable because it makes it feel even more real that they're, this is okay, this is probably a real human who actually lives in Austin, Texas or whatever. And then finally, if you can do it, and this isn't always practical, but the most potent form of a testimonial is a video testimonial where you actually hear the customer talking their own words about the product, which of course, I guess now with some of these generative AI tools, you could make up your own, but this has been sort of historically proof positive that there's a real human saying this.
Richard Hill [00:27:33]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:27:33]:
And so the other thing that you can do too is if your product has any sort of, oh, maybe business or technical affiliation, like if you're selling, you know, computer monitors or something, if you have the, you know, head of design for Apple saying, hey, I use this software product, then you've all, you're moving into not just social proof, but authority, even including a logo. You know, I've seen companies where they had like some particular person who worked for Apple used their product and they used their testimonial and they, the Apple logo is bigger than the person's face in the testimonial because they want the halo effect. from the fact that this person works for this brand. So, you know, anything you can do to make it more credible or lend an air of authority to it is good.
Richard Hill [00:28:31]:
Yeah, good, good. Well, thank you for that. I think a lot of e-commerce brands seem to miss this video testimonial, which, you know, it's easier and easier now to get, you know, people on socials to talk about their experience of buying and experience of the product and the experience of ordering and the process and the obviously the product. It's quite easy to do now. So when you go to product pages and you don't see video testimonials, or at least on the categories homepage, you know, it's quite disappointing because I think it's easier and easier now to sort of get that content. But so another topic I want to talk about is pricing. I think, you know, pricing, very hot topic in e-commerce, the sort of psychological side of pricing. I think, you know, maybe what are some of the biggest sort of pricing mistakes you see with e-com brands?
Roger Dooley [00:29:18]:
Well, you know, people have written entire books on the psychology of pricing. That's a big one. You know, if you're into that, then that's, it's probably good to read at least one or two of those. But I think a few of the techniques that people miss, one little study that I found very interesting, that's super easy to implement. They found that male viewers attributed a higher level of discount to a sale price when the price is printed in red versus black. So merely putting the sale price in red instead of in black showed on average about a 4% lower price perception on male customers. Female customers apparently are more logical or smarter because they weren't affected by the color of the price. They just looked at the amount of the discount.
Roger Dooley [00:30:08]:
But I mean, that's one crazy little thing. But I think The way you present prices is important. SaaS companies are notorious for various kinds of pricing pages because you've got your, here's our free level, here's our beginner level, here's our pro level and our expert level and our enterprise level, and a lot of complexity. But there's things that you can do there to both simplify that process, but also If you lead with the highest price first, usually you start with a free level first and then work your way up. But if you start with the highest price level, so the first thing people see is $499 a month and then it goes down to $199 or $59, you know, then it's like, oh, this, the $59 looks cheap because people create an anchor in their brain. And the first price they see is the anchor. And then when you see lower prices, they seem lower. That's why when we don't see as many TV infomercials today as we used to, because people aren't sitting through, you know, 20 minutes of somebody hard selling on TV much anymore.
Roger Dooley [00:31:20]:
But they always start off with this, you know, thousands of these have been sold for $499. And then as it progresses, you know, but today, you know, you can do that. We can sell it to you for $299. And then pretty soon it's, and if you order within the next 15 minutes, we're going to throw in this free thing. And also, you know, take it down to $149. And in each and every case, they start off with this very high anchor where they're establishing the value for that product. And then the price is getting better and better to the point where you can't resist. And we know that works because these companies would spend millions of dollars running the same ad over and over and over.
Roger Dooley [00:32:01]:
and it would work on people. So, that particular approach isn't as much in vogue today, but the anchoring effect is real. Even irrelevant numbers can create an anchor. So, a big $499 on the page might create a sort of mental anchor for when people get down to the real price of $299. It's crazy, but that's the way our brains work.
Richard Hill [00:32:26]:
You used to see it a lot more, didn't you? This sort of, in different industries, but especially in information marketing, for example, product, um, information products should be $19.99, but we're going to do it for $9.99. I think that's half price straight away. Quite difficult to do with physical products.
Roger Dooley [00:32:43]:
I think it's right.
Richard Hill [00:32:44]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:32:44]:
It's, you know, it still, still works though. If you can establish, uh, what this product would normally sell for. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:32:53]:
Something.
Roger Dooley [00:32:54]:
Yeah. So it, it still, it still does that, but it's important that they see that price first, not that they see the cheap price first and then You know, oh, by the way, you know, this usually sells for some other price.
Richard Hill [00:33:04]:
Yeah. No, thank you for that. So Roger, I'm gonna do a quickfire round. Is that okay with you? We've got 5 seconds or less to answer these questions.
Roger Dooley [00:33:15]:
We'll give it a try.
Richard Hill [00:33:20]:
So friction or persuasion, which kills more revenue for scaling e-commerce brands?
Roger Dooley [00:33:26]:
I would say friction simply because that's a preventer. Persuasion is a motivator.
Richard Hill [00:33:35]:
Yeah, yeah. Bit of a trick question. I was just checking you're awake. One word for the biggest mistakes brands make on their product pages.
Roger Dooley [00:33:45]:
I think too much information that's aimed at the customer's logical brain and not enough emotional or subconscious appeal.
Richard Hill [00:33:54]:
Great. So number 3, AI or human psychologist, who writes better converting copy right now?
Roger Dooley [00:34:02]:
I would say AI has the potential to do it. There's, there's a, I could go into an experiment just that would explain why that's probably true. But at the same time, you still need that human element to judge it. And if it's wrong, then, you know, not Pass it through. Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:34:22]:
So maybe, yeah. Okay. Discount or trust signal, which closes a hesitant buyer faster?
Roger Dooley [00:34:28]:
Well, I think that you hit the point there with hesitant. I think often hesitation is due to trust issues. So increasing trust is, you know, obviously you can have a big discount, a little discount, but I would go with trust on that one, Richard.
Richard Hill [00:34:43]:
Yep. Nice. Nice. Name one brand that gets behavioral science right that most people wouldn't expect.
Roger Dooley [00:34:50]:
Hmm. I would say most travel sites, if you think of like Booking.com, for example, or some of the competitors in that space, they actually employ behavioral science scientists to get their behavioral science right. And that's why you see their pages with all these cues, like only 2 rooms left at this price, 53 people booked this in the last 48 hours, and so on.
Richard Hill [00:35:13]:
Yeah, that's so true. That is so true. Well, thank you for that. But that was a quickfire round.
Roger Dooley [00:35:18]:
Well done. Right. And I'll interject one thing, Richard, there. The question about the copy, there was recently an experiment done that had people evaluate customer communications for empathy. Like, how did this land with you? Which one is better? And people saw either an AI-written one or a human-written one. When they were unlabeled, people found the AI-written communication to be more empathetic than the human-written one, which is totally against all logic, you would think. But that was true. But here's the catch.
Roger Dooley [00:35:55]:
When they were labeled, then people prefer the human one. So people still want that human touch, even if it's not quite as polished as AI. Yeah. If they know.
Richard Hill [00:36:05]:
Yeah. It's definitely getting there, isn't it? The AI side with the writing. So, um, right, change of direction, Roger. Last few questions. Um, so, um, my understanding is you co-founded College Confidential and built it into a category-leading community before selling it. What did you learn about building audiences' trust that directly translates to the e-commerce sort of brand building today?
Roger Dooley [00:36:30]:
Well, I think that community is often overlooked by e-commerce companies. People live in communities. Maybe they're your community, maybe they're on Reddit, maybe they're on your Facebook page or someplace else, but community is still important. And I think that simply treating people well, being open and honest about what you're doing, being transparent, not allowing abusive behavior in a community, that was, that was our key to success. really was other communities were in the same space, but they kind of resembled in some ways what Twitter is like now with people just fighting each other and arguing. And we said, no, we're not going to do that. We have consistent rules and we built a community that was very supportive. And I think that if you can bring people together where they're exchanging information in a supportive way, it's magic.
Richard Hill [00:37:20]:
Yeah, no, I like that a lot. I think a safe place where people can converse and discuss without knowing that maybe they're going to get hammered, as we say here, you know, with, uh, yeah, some negativity or so forth. Yeah, I think a lot of people want to be able to belong to these places where they can be heard and, um, you know, and feel safe. Yeah, brilliant. So, um, last couple of questions, Roger. So I think, um, a lot happening. There's a lot happening. You know, I'm— I need to read a couple of your books, um, to So I think to swat up a bit, but I think if you were sat here in 3 years, what do you think about your sort of future predictions 3 years from now? Which parts of e-commerce marketing get completely transformed by behavioral science, which maybe stay a bit more human? What would you say to brands?
Roger Dooley [00:38:15]:
As fast as AI is advancing, that's a tough prediction to make because every Every day I'm amazed by what AI can do and how now it's doing a better job than it was 6 months ago or a year ago. Yeah. So I think a lot's going to change, but I think that the, uh, certainly for generating content, uh, I think that's going to increasingly be dominated by AI. Uh, but I think that in terms of, uh, strategy, uh, that's going to be still human. You need to know what the big picture is, what direction you're heading in steering the ship. And certainly that human judgment factor. You know, there was just an example where Starbucks in Korea, South Korea used an AI-generated, at least partly generated campaign for their, they have a big drink mug, much bigger than this one, they call the Tank. And they did a Tank Day promotion, which happened to fall on a day that was the same day as a political tragedy in which protesters were shot and killed.
Roger Dooley [00:39:28]:
And it was a symbol of the sort of military crackdown. So, they—
Richard Hill [00:39:32]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:39:32]:
They ran this Tank Day promotion on this date. And I mean, it was a complete disaster. I mean, it was— the CEO ended up resigning. There were boycotts, brand sales dropped dramatically. I mean, it was just the most horrible experience. And it was because there was never a, you know, that emotional logic wasn't applied. Now, I would argue though that with some of the techniques that I talk about in The Persuasion Engine, had they run that campaign through an emotion and empathy check and empathy audit that Claude, in fact, I did. I ran, I ran that exact experiment.
Roger Dooley [00:40:14]:
I made sure that Claude didn't know anything about this particular event. And I said, okay, you know, what, what could, what do you think about this? What could go wrong here? And it correctly identified that, okay, there is this, you know, tank significance here and this, this could go seriously wrong. And, but nobody ran that audit and they just said, okay, this looks okay. And they did it. So to me, that's something that every company should be doing with any major communication.
Richard Hill [00:40:47]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:40:48]:
Yeah.
Richard Hill [00:40:49]:
You do see it, don't you? Where just fundamental flaws are in the copy of the content, the message, the PR piece, because it's just not had that human touch that would just spot it straight away or would You know, if the time has been—
Roger Dooley [00:41:03]:
The humans are writing it, but they don't— the humans lack the human touch. You know, the human is typically like, it might even be a CEO who's focused on, okay, I know what we have to do as a business. You know, we have to change this policy because the old policy is unsustainable. So we're going to make this announcement. And they do it in a way that is tone deaf to how real human being customers are going to perceive that. And that's where AI, strangely enough, can add the human touch. It can spot those empathy gaps and show you how to fix them.
Richard Hill [00:41:36]:
Yeah. Well, Roger, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for coming on the show. I like to end every episode with a book recommendation. I see you've got one or two there, one or two special ones as well. What book would you recommend to our listeners?
Roger Dooley [00:41:48]:
Well, yeah, my books are behind me there. This is, I guess, my own book recommendation, but I'll make a an independent book recommendation. And that would be Robert Cialdini's Influence, the latest version. It is a classic. It is a great guide for marketers, for salespeople to understand how real human beings are influenced by non-conscious factors, his 7 principles of influence.
Richard Hill [00:42:16]:
Yeah.
Roger Dooley [00:42:17]:
And I think that if you have to read one book in this whole space, that would be the one to start with.
Richard Hill [00:42:23]:
Brilliant. Brilliant. We will link that up in the show notes. For those that want to find out more about you, Roger, what's the best way to do that and to reach out to you?
Roger Dooley [00:42:32]:
Best way is either to find me on LinkedIn. I am frequently posting there and easy to connect with under Roger Dooley. That's all. You'll find me easily. And rogerdooley.com where you can find links to my YouTube channel, my Forbes column and other things there, as well as my podcasts.
Richard Hill [00:42:54]:
Well, thank you, Roger. We'll link everything up in the, in the show notes. Thank you for being a guest, and I look forward to catching up again.
Roger Dooley [00:42:59]:
Well, my pleasure, Richard. It's been a great conversation. Thank you.
Richard Hill [00:43:02]:
Cheers. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.
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