With the Wheel of Persuasion, our Online Dialogue colleague and psychologist aims to Bart Schutz provide insight into what motivates people and how they can be persuaded, and how we can apply this knowledge in our field. Today, he discusses the Peak End Rule.

The Peak End Rule is one of many persuasion techniques To increase your online efficiency. The bottom line: we pretty much judge our experiences on their peak and on how they ended. In this article you'll find 5 tips to help you employ this seduction technique for increased sales and more enthusiastic customers, or other online goals.

The Peak End Rule is one of many persuasion techniques from the Wheel of Persuasion (sign up for the beta!). In this piece a start on how to use knowledge of this Peak End Rule to improve your boost conversion and give customers a pleasant memory. The Peak End rule is people's habit, when they think back on an experience, of rating the experience based only on the peak and the end point (e.g., ‘pleasant’ or just ‘unpleasant’). Other information, while not lost, is not used by us in evaluating the experience.

A painfully effective technique

In a study with real patients, patients underwent a colonoscopy, a fairly painful medical procedure. In patient A, the pain was shorter but more severe. Patient B underwent the same kind of pain, but with 2 differences: B did not experience a spike, but was in pain for much longer. Patient B therefore reported more pain than A during the procedure.

So much for ‘the experience. Now ’the memory.
When A and B were asked much later about their colonoscopy experience (“How bad was it?”), the memory was inverse to the experience: Patient A recalled the procedure as much more painful than patient B. A typical example of the Peak End Rule: the peak and the end determine how you remember an experience.

And see there a painfully effective seduction technique to improve your online returns. For more background, check out these videos from 2 of my absolute gurus Daniel Kahneman on TED (see video below) and Dan Ariely on TED.

5 persuasion tips (the Peak End Rule applied)

And then the ‘peak end’ of this post. To keep your customers and prospects coming back more often and recommending you to everyone, you want them to remember your online dialogue as very nice. It is for this user experience so more important that you have a climax and a great ending in your online dialogue than that the whole dialogue is fine.

1. Collect your ‘enlightening moments’ from your sales dialogue and put them into one happy highlight (instead of spreading them throughout the customer journey).
2. If possible: make sure this happy highlight is at the end of your buying dialogue (the happy climax).
3. Next, bring your service dialogues, micro-conversions and other ‘exit moments’ of all other dialogues mapped out.
4. Also create there micro happy climaxes.
5. Think about enticing perks, such as the golden oldies: an unexpected gift on your thank you page! Or more specific perks such as unlocking badges or access to exclusive content, games or apps.

 
Can you think of any other applications of the peak end rule? If so, be sure to share them in the comments below.

Originally posted on July 23, 2012 at Frankwatching