Humans need to exercise control for our own survival. It’s not even a conscious choice, we just have to, it’s innate. Why then, do most forms of marketing remove all control from the customer? In most marketing, brands talk about a topic, then tell the customer to do something, instead of asking them what they would like to do.
According to psychology, that presents a huge miss, because humans need to be able to make choices in order to survive, or at least to feel fulfilled. This principle is crazy, because even if you have an offer that your customer wants, but you don’t let them choose it, they might say no.
However, if you present them options and let them choose, then the exact same offer will be super compelling to them, just because they chose it! Nuts right? But also, makes sense, and we all do it.
Let’s look at how you create “The Choice Effect” so your audience can choose what they want and you get to increase engagement, dramatically.
We’re going to follow a quiz form The Car Mom, one of the top car buying advice websites in the world. They do a perfect job of creating a decision tree quiz that lets users decide for themselves what they want out of a car.
The experience starts off by asking the user for their email address to access the quiz. A fair trade, after all, the amount of research that had to go into making this quiz is astronomical. There are so many cars, and a quiz that can help you identify the right one for your family is quite valuable. This happens on a Flodesk Landing Page that will redirect to an Interact Quiz when the person opts in.
Once you opt in, the decisions begin. And the control is all yours as the quiz taker. You get to say what you want. No one is telling you anything, they don’t even make suggestions. Psychologically this is like a hit of dopamine, you need this in your life. And the choices you are making are hyper-relevant to the point of this quiz, you can obviously tell how your choices are going to shape the recommendation made to you at the end of the quiz, so it’s not like you’re just making random choices with no meaning.
As you make choices through the quiz, it branches off, asking you specific follow-up questions based on your previous choices. So the experience not only asks you for your choices, but also demonstrates active listening by asking you questions based on your previous answers. Now you are not only showing people that you can ask them good questions but also that you can pay attention to them.
The experience goes on until it know exactly what car is right for your family. It keeps asking follow-up questions to narrow it down so you are going to get the right recommendation. After all, if you’re going to put in the time to answer all these questions, you want your outcome to be accurate!
The result is super specific, which is only possible because of the branching logic in this quiz. If you know anything about cars, it’s pretty hard to make a recommendation this specific. At the very least it’s risky because if you’re totally off-base then people will be turned off by that. But, because the quiz asks people, and people make their own choices, and then those choices are reflected in what’s recommended at the end, it works out perfectly.
There’s also a link to look at other cars in the category by clicking the button, which takes you back to a page on The Car Mom site for increased engagement.
Letting users choice is a powerful, and I would say, very kind, way to increase engagement and conversions. People fundamentally need to be able to make choices and be in control of their own destiny. A decision tree quiz lets them do that.
Click below to create your own quiz experience that lets your users make their own choices, maintain a sense of control, and work with you.