Fogg Behavior Model

What it says is that desired paid behavior happens when three things converge.

There's high motivation, "I want to do it.

"There is peak ability, it's easy to take action, it's easy to do it. 

And there's a trigger, something that compels us to take action, like an email in our inbox that says, click here, or a call to action on a website.

High motivation, ability and triggers it′s basically informs us when to ask people to take action.

For example, if I want us to fill out a form, the more form fields that are the higher the friction. So the ability goes down. It's harder to fill out this form.

But my likelihood of filling out that long form depends on our motivation.So if this is fill out this form to get $1 million or a free Tesla, 100 form fields is no problem to get $1 million.I'll fill every single field out.Now obviously what we're selling is not free Tesla or whatever.So the motivation is going to be lower

We need to balance carefully how easy or hard it is to take action versus how motivated they are.Also, we should probably not even ask people to take action before we've invested in increasing their motivation.

Increasing motivation is so much more powerful than reducing friction.

Great idea is to make websites auto-detect where we are. So all our location fields already prefilled out.

HOW TO DESIGN IMPACTS BEHAVIOR? 

If we know how to impact behavior, we can design for behavior.

(Dr. BJ Fogg) The Fogg Behavior Model 

Explains that three elements must come together at the same time for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing.

Behavior = motivation x ability x trigger https://behaviormodel.org/

We want to aim top right (high motivation, easy to do, a trigger in place). 

Frustration. If we have high motivation and low ability (difficult to do), what we’ll get is frustration. 

Annoyance If it’s low motivation, but easy to do (e.g. take out the trash), we get annoyance.

Everything starts with defining the specific desired behavior – in our case, it’s what we want the user to do, our conversion goal. It might be getting people to buy our product, sign up for our software and so on.

We can identify what stops people from taking the desired actions

Motivation

Ideally, the users are already motivated to do the behavior (which is why they came to our site to begin with), and our role now is about helping people do what they already want to do (see Ability). The more motivated people are to do a behavior, the more likely they will do it

We can increase motivation with an effective sales copy and what not, but if we’re trying to artificially *create* motivation to make a behavior happen, we’re swimming upstream (and the current is strong).

Motivator #1: Pleasure / Pain

There are two sides to the first motivator: pleasure and pain.

The result of this motivator is immediate. There’s almost no thinking or anticipating. People are responding to what’s happening in the moment. Pleasure and pain are primitive responses related to self-preservation: hunger, sex, and other stuff related to keeping the humankind going.

Motivator #2: Hope / Fear

The second core motivator in the model is a dimension that has the following two sides: hope and fear, motivators in persuasive technology.

This dimension is characterized by anticipation of an outcome. Hope is the anticipation of something good happening. Fear is the anticipation of something bad, often the anticipation of loss.

In some situations, people will accept pain (buying home insurance) in order to overcome fear (anticipation of a house burning down). 

People are motivated by hope when joining a dating website. They are motivated by fear when they update settings in virus software.

Hope is the most ethical and empowering motivator.

Motivator #3: Social Acceptance / Rejection

It impacts everything from the clothes we wear to the language we use.

People are especially motivated to avoid any negative consequences like being socially rejected.

We depended on living in groups to survive. A simple thing like posting pictures to Facebook is driven significantly by the desire to be socially accepted.

Ability

It′s all about whether the task at hand is easy to do. If we want them to sign up for our product, but it takes filling 10 fields to do so, we′re setting ourselves up for failure.

Ability is more important than motivation. If I’m committed to eating healthy – my motivation is super high – but there’s no healthy food around when I’m hungry, it’s very difficult to take desired action and I’ll probably grab something unhealthy instead. Motivation alone is not enough.

It’s easier to increase conversions by making it easier to do

Become a master of simplification, not motivation. Have it as your goal to always make taking action as easy as 1-2-3

The more “work” prospects need to do to understand and/or buy what we offer, the higher motivation is needed.

Most people don’t want to be taught and trained. They want single click and done behaviors. Also – don’t ask people to do something that’s against their routine.

Trigger

Without an appropriate trigger, the behavior will not occur even if both motivation and ability are high.

A Trigger is what prompts we to take action:

A call to action on a website is a trigger. Be careful what’s in the content of the trigger.

Fogg believes this is how we should approach healthy behavior: By providing individuals small steps towards large success.

Obsess about triggers like our business depended on it (since it does)

• If we trigger people at the right time, they will thank you. (TIME)
• If we trigger when they lack ability, they’ll get frustrated.(EASY & QUICK)
• If we trigger people when they don’t have motivation (e.g. asking people to shop for a Christmas present in September), we’re annoying people. (WHEN/Context)

2 kinds of triggers: hot and cold

Hot triggers are things we can do right now (e.g. buttons saying “Get immediate access” or “Download now”). 

Cold triggers are things which one cannot act on right now (e.g. billboard ads for a website we spot while driving).

For effective website design is: put “hot triggers” in the path of motivated people.

Tap an existing motivation people already have. It’s very difficult to motivate people to do something they don’t want to already do. Understand what motivation already exists then make it easy to get it done.

Build a trigger mechanism as if people would never do anything without asking them to do so. 100% CTA

Almost no behavior happens without a trigger. This is why it’s important to send out promotional emails during Christmas and other holidays. We need to trigger their behavior with an email or other media.

PSYCHOLOGY & PERSUASION Minidegree

https://cxl.com/institute/certificate/cxl-psychology-persuasion/