While scouring the internet for web-building resources, I came across the topic of captology. It sounds like a kidnapping term, but it is more closely related to captivation. William Grosso calls it "a good idea with a bad name". If you who don't know what it is, the first four letters stand for Computers As Persuasive Technologies. A definition of the term is given at Wikipedia.
It caught my interest because my website is in the design stage right now, so it's a good time to learn about the phsycology behind what brings people to a website, and what keeps their attention once they get there. Now, mind you, I'm not talking about using some kind of subliminal message to hypnotize visitors into buying my products (though that might be nice), but I'd at least like to keep people around long enough to look at them.
So, what are the factors that decide how long a visitor stays on your website?
In a 2002 study done by Stanford University on web credibility, it was found that the top reason people will visit your website is if they've found it useful previously. No surprise there, but I did find it surprising that not updating your site frequently received the worst negative score. So, even if your product or service is something that remains constant, it might be a good idea to include some type of content on your site that changes often, such as a newsletter page or a specials page.
Also no surprise, the study concluded that the easier your website is to navigate, the more chance of your visitors staying past the first click. It does provide an interesting and detailed breakdown which shows a rating of how annoying many common types of inconveniences are perceived to be by those visitors.
As a side note, I find it it interesting to note that B. J. Fogg, recognized as a pioneer in the study of captology, prefers the old-fashioned telephone over being contacted via the internet. Maybe he knows something that we don't?
Besides web credibility, another topic in the study of captology include such things as interactive web sites; the theory being that the more interactive you are with your visitor, the longer they will stay on your site. Use of such things as live chat or virtual customer service are examples. I like the idea of live chat, and I've used it as a customer several times with great success, but virtual customer service? I had never even heard the term until I started researching captology, however, this "robot" kind of scares me. She's a far cry from the little paper clip character in MSWord.
Louis Rosenfeld sparked a good discussion about the ethics of captology on his blog. Although really, isn't any type of customer interaction, even in the brick-and-mortar world, all about persuading human behavior? Online, we just have the technology to do it in a more personalized way. For instance, a message saying "Hi, Cathi" when a customer visits has become common on most websites. Most people would not call this manipulation, but it is, somewhat. You are trying to give the customer a warm and fuzzy feeling, thinking that you remember who they are.
I'd like to hear your thoughts. Do you even think that captology is a legitimate science? And, how far do you think is too far in the technological world of human persuasion?
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