Excerpt - Case Study: Three Column Layouts and Seducible Moments

September 16, 2004

Here's a little taste of our upcoming Case Study series.

Three Column Layouts and Seducible Moments

Several people over the last few years have been promoting the concept of Seducible Moments within User Tasks. Among them, Andrew Chak has been at the forefront of this movement by putting forth the idea that sites not only need to be usable, by using elements in the design that will motivate users to make the right decision or perform a preferred task. Those elements are in many cases are strategically placed on a place to take advantage of a seducible moment within a User’s decision process

Simply put, a seducible moment is a moment in time when a person is the most susceptible to a cross-sell. In the real world we have all experienced this type of situation on an almost daily basis:

• When ordering a meal at a fast-food restaurant – “Would you like to Super Size that?”
• Buying a car – “Do you want to get the upgraded suspension or the service contract as well?”
• Buying a movie – “Oh, I see that you like action adventure. You might this movie as well”

Each of these examples are instances where we as consumers right after we have gotten what we wanted—food, a consumer product, etc. at the check out counter are at our most vulnerable and influential state. In the retail world this phenomenon is referred to as suggested selling and we see it everyday.

In any of the examples mentioned above an attempt to cross-sell something before or well after a person made a decision to buy a specific product would be futile. The reason this is true is because we as consumers have not gotten what we set out to get yet. We need to be satisfied we got what we wanted in the first place before being open to suggestion.

Now take this concept to the Web and one can see similar applications when it comes to related content, job applications or promotions. Every marketer or content author would love to promote a new feature or content item that might be of interest to his or her User. In some cases it may be a similar job opportunity to one that a Candidate just applied to or a piece of content that is related to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues.

The fundamental difference in meeting these desires is in the approach of seducing users with the cross-sell. It is this aspect of the user experience of a site that needs to be well thought-out and carried out in a very subtle manner. It is the difference between a hard sell and a soft sell at a car dealership. We all know what the result of a hard sell is, so the secret with Seducible Moments on the Web is the art of the soft sell and timing in the User decision cycle.

The full version of this Case Study will be available on Monday 9/20