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Writer's pictureanetabirnerova

Don’t push to sell. Remove obstacles that keep customers from buying

My parents went on vacation. They left me in charge of watering their plants. “With a watering can you'll be done in an hour,” my dad advised. “Okey dokey,“ I thought. “I'm gonna make stuff easier for me though.” There was an old water hose in the garden I intended to use for my mischief.

The next day I commenced my plan. I turned the handle and heard the gurgling sound. But I saw no water. The hose did not work. I panicked and pushed more. A stronger water stream was sent to the hose. It started to swell up in the middle but still no water.


Something was blocking the stream inside. I panicked and pushed the handle even more. Finally, a piece of old dirt flew out of the house and I could take care of the garden. (Hey, is it just me or did that story sound pornographic?)


Anyhow, what I tried to demonstrate is the difference between the pushing strategy and the removing obstacles strategy. I sided with pushing this time. It cost me lots of energy to make it work. Much smarter would be to turn off the water and clean the hose first. 


In the 1930s professor Kurt Lewin at the Berlin University developed a force field analysis. He suggested that our final behaviour depends on the forces around us. One set of forces is helping, the other one hindering.


That means one important thing – if you want to influence a person's behaviour, you must influence his surroundings. That’s where the push/hinder forces are.  

As a copywriter and UX writer myself I believe in merging marketing and UX principles in my work. Marketing can push customers towards the goal while UX removes obstacles on the way. In Lewis’s words, it would be probably said like this: marketing creates helping forces and UX removes the hindering ones.





It doesn’t mean that marketers never try to remove obstacles from your way. BUT a UX specialist never tries to push you. That’s an important difference. 


Of course, even a UX specialist wants you to steer in a preferred direction sometimes. But he does it by making the other options more difficult to follow. They can do that because a UX specialist is a god in their universe. They work with the whole app or website. 


Imagine a complex program like a good old Photoshop for example. You’re the first time user and two thoughts are probably running through your head: “I want to try everything! Let me see what you can do!” and „OMG, it’s so much stuff, I’m getting overwhelmed…“


As a UX specialist, I might lose you once you get overwhelmed. You would simply be like “Okay, let me come back to it later. Really impressive program though, Chuck.” …and I never saw you again.


So instead I want to persuade you to learn slowly. “Be patient, my Padavan,” I whisper into your ear while I disable all the advanced tools in the app. 


“What the f#@$k?” You might ask.


Well, I know the Photoshop learning process is long and you should start with the basics. But as a new user, you are too excited to hear me out. So I removed obstacles in the preferred way (I highlighted the basic tools) and added obstacles to others (I hid the advanced tools).


The result? The user is learning to work with basics. 100% success rate. (This is just an example of course. Usually, you don't hide the advanced tools. You just make them less visible.)


On the other hand, if I were to use the push method marketers use, all would be different. The app would be drowning in banners suggesting to start with the easy tools. Success rate? 10% at best. 





Marketers can’t add obstacles on the unwanted roads. They don’t rule “the whole universe“. Imagine you’re doing marketing for McDonald’s for example. Adding obstacles to the unwanted options would mean you barricade all the Burger Kings in your neighbourhood—100% success rate, but illegal.


Lose the push mentality.


Okay. You can’t add obstacles as a marketer. But you can focus more on removing them instead of pushing customers right through them like a water stream through an old ball of dirt (still weirdly pornographic…).


The Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman summed this approach up as changing the mindset. Marketers usually wonder HOW they can get people to buy stuff. But sometimes we should ask instead: WHY aren’t they buying it already? What’s in their way? A ball of dirt? Let’s remove it!


Just think about it. What can you do to make a customer’s life easier? Making another emailing campaign certainly would not be the answer. 


We are partly in control of the customer's environment. We can’t remove our competition from it (as we summed up before). But we can make our goods more approachable. Maybe people don’t buy your stuff because they’re afraid it’s too complicated. Well either make it simpler or at least share the tutorial with everybody for free. 


Maybe they think it’s too expensive. Well… introduce an even more expensive option to the market, so the original won’t look that pricey in comparison. 


That was evil. I know. But marketers are no angels. They’ll love this tip. To save my karma (and yours as well), I want you to do at least one good deed per… year. Just one. It won’t hurt. And it does not have to cost you much money.





A few years ago I was at a marketing conference where a glass chandelier retailer explained how he raised his revenue. People were looking at his goods but not buying them. So he asked them why. It turned out people were scared the expensive glass would break during the delivery. So he added one simple sentence on every product detail page: “We guarantee a safe delivery. If it breaks, it’s on us!“


People start buying more immediately. That’s the power of UX writing. Small change, big gain.


He could easily invite marketing specialist into the mix as well and ask them to add the sentence to their campaigns, banners, commercials, whatever. That’s how marketers can do something good as well. 


So what's the message? Stop pushing and start asking questions respectfully. It’s gonna pay off.


Copywriting vs UX writing


Just for all the folks who are not sure about the difference between a marketing copywriter and a UX writer. I've been a copywriter for +10 years and a UX writer for 8 years and I still get this question at least once a month. So... hope this helps.

Copywriting


UX writing

One way | brand → customer 

Communication flows...

Both ways | Brand ↔ customer 

To sell 

Writer's goal

To explain 

memorable

The copy should be...

immersive



I hope you enjoyed my hose story. Let me know in the comment section.










Source: Richard Shotton | The Illusion of Choice


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