Skills for 2020: Digital Psychology

Digital Psychology (also known as web psychology) takes a different approach. It looks at online behaviour through the lens of psychology and behavioural economics – and through this lens, explains why customers are acting the way they are. Better still, by applying the lessons learnt from social science theory, we’re able to remove barriers to online conversion and increase customer spend and retention.

Digital Psychology is a relatively new discipline that combines theory from the worlds of behavioural economics, psychology and digital marketing to create digital communications that are compelling and persuasive to our unconscious minds.

We all know that Amazon is the king of online sales. It doesn’t just use the digital psychology toolkit – it kind of generated this new digital skill!

In South Africa, we have seen companies like Entelect, Africa Personnel and Nedbank demanding for this skillset with their new hires, but we predict that in the now future this skillset will stand on it's own and companies big on Digital Marketing will begin to hire individuals for this specific job. We say so because its more than an intuitive skillset.

We have now seen that we can wake up with one trend and sleep on another. The social media streets are fast pacing and constantly changing. What is catchy now will not remain catchy the whole day. No one has mastered how to do referral as effective as Dropbox did. The same trick doesn’t work twice.

We predict a future where this skill stands alone and specializes. Here are some of the best practices we have seen :

• Anchoring - a concept of presenting two sets of information in a systematic format so as to drive and persuade a decision to a specific set of information.
• Commitment and Consistency is a psychological tendency that people have to ensure alignment with actions, promises and their inner values and belief system.
• Loss Aversion - people have heightened awareness of loss compared to gain in value. Amazon use this behavioural trait to drive their sales and remain kings of online sales.
• Other aspects of Digital Psychology include

1. Need to Complete
2. Reciprocity
3. Rewards (Best done by Discovery Insurance)
4. Scarcity
5. Social Proof (Rocomamas play this to their advantage)
6. and Triggers ( Well played by Chicken Licken)

Read Digital Psychology – a free library of psychological principles and examples for inspiration to enhance the customer experience and connect with your users. Written by Daniel Stefanovic

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