If you haven’t noticed, Twitter recently changed the way you “favorite” tweets, by adding a neat little heart to the fold. Not only is it a heart, it’s animated heart! When you click it, little bursts are emitted from the art, confirming your action, and encouraging you to do it again.
You may have noticed that mobile games have a very similar action-and-effect process, and that is not by accident!
It’s not a coincidence. “Video games very quickly figured out that interactivity was a big plus,” says Scott Steinberg video game expert and futurist at consulting firm TechSavvy. “The more positive effects you associate with a specific action, the likelier you are to take that action going forward.” Essentially, if you click something and something good happens, it’s experienced as a mini-reward in the brain: a little dopamine rush. That rush is chemically addicting. The more positive affects a player associates with an action, i.e. sparkles, points, or compliments (“Awesome shot!”), the more likely they are to keep doing that thing.
So, if we were to transpose this idea to copy-writing/content design…what do we get?
We see that positive encouragement is something that can push users into completing further actions! By including little positive effects to your copy/check-out process/landing page…you can effectively move users/customers toward a desired outcome.
But this doesn’t mean scarcity or fear-based emails/content are invalid…it proves the point even more than you need to know the way your audience speaks, and interacts, and play off of those motives.
What are your thoughts on action-based-outcomes? We’d love to hear!