{"id":12221,"date":"2018-10-18T05:11:33","date_gmt":"2018-10-18T10:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.invespcro.com\/blog\/?p=12221"},"modified":"2024-03-19T15:13:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T15:13:38","slug":"the-reason-cro-is-flawed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.invespcro.com\/blog\/the-reason-cro-is-flawed\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reason CRO is FLAWed"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 10<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

Image Source: Wikipedia<\/a><\/p>\n

Humans are flawed creatures. We conform to a number of biases outlined by the world\u2019s greatest psychologist. Wikipedia has listed 180 biases that impact our everyday decisions. <\/span><\/p>\n

This in turn makes our jobs as marketers and optimizers quite tricky. According to social scientists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, you can\u2019t quite overcome your biases. You\u2019ll always fall into them. Tversky died in 1996 and Kahneman went on to win the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for the work the both of the men did together. His work was summarized in the highly acclaimed and 2011 best seller,\u00a0<\/span>Thinking, Fast and Slow<\/span><\/i>.<\/span>Wait so marketers and conversion rate optimizers\u2013 they\u2019re biased creatures too!? <\/span>Reminder: we are as human as the consumer. <\/span><\/p>\n

I relay the story of my own bias during a qualitative research<\/a> session with my team where I was completely convinced that the target customer behaved a certain way. <\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just taking into consideration the marketer and optimizer who most likely is somewhat conscious of these biases humans hold (if they know what they\u2019re doing). On the consumer side it\u2019s worse. This concept that we cannot change our predisposed biases, ultimately means, we can\u2019t alter consumer behavior.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The bias that Kahneman and Tversky listed as the most damaging: the\u00a0<\/span>confirmation bias<\/span><\/a>. Think about the current political divisiveness in America. The confirmation bias allows for this to fester because it\u2019s the effect that leads us to look for evidence confirming what we already think or suspect. The right believes the left is bonkers and is driving the country to shambles, and the left believes the right is extreme and out to destroy the fabric of America. Neither, even when confronted with opposing data to what they believe, are willing to accept anything but what they believe.<\/span><\/p>\n

This idea scares me about what many marketers and optimizers may be doing. They may not be conscious of this bias and they simply continue to investigate in within a scope of data that confirms what they believe refusing any alternative evidence. <\/span><\/p>\n

I read an article a year ago in <\/span>the New Yorker<\/span><\/a> on how facts simply do not change our mind. This is present in our every day life if we consider the deep partisanship of America as mentioned above. But it\u2019s even present in the racial divide in terms of how races view each other and themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

The confirmation bias actually impacts me personally very often. I speak internationally at conferences such as Inbound, SMX series, Business of Software and many more. But as a hijab adorning (the scarf on my head) Muslim woman, I\u2019m wearing a label that many people have a confirmation bias against. Whether I like it or not, as much as I talk and reveal my expertise, there are too many people that cannot \u201cchange\u201d their minds about me because of the bias they have against Muslims.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Kahneman himself is pessimistically convinced is it almost impossible change our biases <\/span>citing the Muller-Lyer Illusion<\/span><\/a>. It is basically two lines, both the same length, but at the end of each line the arrows are pointed in different directions; one inward, and one outward. <\/span>\"\"<\/p>\n

What Kahneman found was that even when the evidence and fact are present that the lines are the same length, people still <\/span>perceive<\/span><\/i> one line to be shorter than the other. But we can convince our analytical mind (system 2 according to Kahneman) that our system 1 perception (automatic, unconscious, and fast thinking mind) is wrong. System 1 is efficient but prone to errors and biases, while system 2 is very controlled.<\/span><\/div>\n

In the real world, it\u2019s not so easy to reach system 2. And when dealing with daily quick decisions by consumers, the challenge is greater. Most of our decisions are made with system 1 (about 90% of them!).<\/span><\/p>\n

There are many stories and experiments done testing the effect of psychological biases. What we have found conducting CRO for many years that indeed, it\u2019s not easy to change people\u2019s thinking, although not impossible. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is supported by social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett, a social psychologist at the University of Michigan. He believes, as a result of his research, that there is a great possibility in training people to overcome pitfalls of various biases. <\/span><\/p>\n

The reality I found while researching this article was that the biases touch each and every part of the sales cycle and consumer journey. And this confirms something I\u2019ve talked about in regards to CRO: it\u2019s not about testing your website. If you have a company that is doing template tweaking for you, it\u2019s not going to give you that huge impact you\u2019re seeking. Ultimately every decision at any point in the sales cycle may already have preconceived biases or builds up biases. If the marketer or optimizer is tackling just one small part of the experience, they are missing the boat. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Let\u2019s peel it a part \u2013 understand some of the most prevalent biases that impact the consumer, your customer, and you, and then present different methodologies and approaches to countering the particular bias:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Confirmation Bias<\/span><\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve talked about this specific bias at length above.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Confirmation bias<\/b>, also called\u00a0<\/span>confirmatory bias<\/b>\u00a0or\u00a0<\/span>my side bias<\/b>,<\/span>[Note 1]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.<\/span>[1]<\/span><\/a>\u00a0It is a type of\u00a0<\/span>cognitive bias<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and a systematic error of\u00a0<\/span>inductive reasoning<\/span><\/a>.<\/span>\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Wikipedia<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How does it impact consumers? <\/strong><\/p>\n

According to <\/span>Jeff Toister, confirmation bias can<\/span><\/a>:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n