by Patricia Mayo

Of course you’re not. What, you - afraid to read a blog post? Pshaw. No way. Couldn’t happen.

Overcoming ambiguity aversion
Photo by Sophie

Yet if I had titled this “Ambiguity Aversion” and just left it at that, I bet you wouldn’t be reading this right now. That’s because of a hard-wired fact of humanity - we’re fully-trained trained skeptics of anything unfamiliar.

And I’m willing to bet that if I didn’t tell you I’m about to detail how to overcome ambiguity aversion to increase any metric, you probably wouldn’t read beyond this point. But since I just did - well, let’s move on, shall we?

Ambiguity Aversion Explained

In short, ambiguity aversion (also known as uncertainty aversion) means we would rather take on a known risk or cost than an unknown risk or cost.

In other words, we would rather read a long blog post if we know it’s a long blog post, than read a long blog post if we’re caught by surprise.

Ever notice that visitors referred by social media have a higher bounce rate than any other referral source? Or the fact they spend, on average, about 1 minute on that one page they see?

Ambiguity aversion is why… well, at least partially. The rest has to do with properly creating anticipation, but that’s another story for another time.

Shedding some light on the subject
Photo by Sigurd Decroos

Easy Does It The Familiar Way

Easy Street
Photo by Andrew Beierle

“Easy” is determined in the first 10 to 30 seconds on your site - and is arguably the most important hurdle to overcome. Over on CopyOz I dipped into this a bit with the concept of C.R.A.P..

Google has the majority market share for search because of that one single concept. Sure lots of people may use Yahoo and MSN, but the search function is lost amidst all the things you can do.

Maybe, just maybe, more people visit Yahoo and MSN than Google - but when they think “search,” they think “Google.” And that, my friends, speaks to the power of focus.

However, simplification has its place. Too much simplification can make your site just as “hard” as too much complexity. The key is to present the right information right when your visitors want to see it.

Now pay attention, because I’m about to give away one of my secrets.

Psychologically, faces have been proven to not only draw the most “eye-time”, but also evoke trust, comfort, and action.

We’re very familiar with faces. We see them every day.

Having faces strategically placed on your site will kill that skeptic red flag and help your visitors do what you what them to do.

You see that picture of me over in the far right sidebar? Note everything around that picture - what’s the first thing you see?

I’m willing to bet (real money!) it’s the signup form in the middle column.

I’m “looking” at it, I’m “pointing” at it - it’s inevitable, you will see that form.

Conventional wisdom says to put the most important things higher up on the page.

Well guess what - that signup form is the most used thing on this entire site and it’s literally smack dab in the middle! Conventional wisdom just went out the window.

New visitors, return visitors, bouncing visitors, minute-men visitors - it doesn’t matter. They see it, and they sign up.

How’s that for ease of use.

Going Deeper Underground

Thinking about it...
Photo by Ramzi Hashisho

Ambiguity aversion goes much deeper though. Remember I said “risk or cost.”

Risk - in a visitor’s mind - relates to things like wasting minutes they can never get back on something totally useless, not being able to understand, or opening themselves up to spam.

Cost - in a visitor’s mind - is much more subliminal.

Everything we do has a “background brain process” figuring out how much an action is going to cost in terms of effort.

“Effort cost” is calculated on the most minuscule things. Take for instance, let’s say you’re doing a Google search.

Just going to Google is a cost. Typing in your query is another cost. Clicking the “search” button is another cost.

Looking through the results is another cost. Clicking one of the results is another cost, etc.

And then you reach the bottom of the page. Clicking the “next page” link is another cost, and the biggest of all - because you’re sitting there thinking of all the cost after you click that link.

Things like potential relevancy of the second page, scanning the results for something useful and clicking more links run through your mind as you determine the cost.

The biggest determining factor in whether or not the cost is too great is relevance. Generally, if you’re looking for “more of the same,” you’ll click that link without a second thought - but if the results were unsatisfactory, you’ll most likely edit your query.

For trusted resources like search engines, visitors know that if they could just get their search query right, they can find what they need.

Other web sites aren’t quite so fortunate.

Piece of Cake Staying Power

Make staying a piece of cake
Photo by Marcelo Terraza

The “Best of ComHacker” and “Last 5 Posts in Persuasion” are all the way at the bottom for a reason. Remember my search query example - once a visitor reaches the bottom of a page, they have a choice to make.

Do they change the query (go to a different site, in this case), or click “next” to get more of the same (that is, if they liked the post to begin with).

If you have gotten this far, you want more of the same. If you don’t reach the bottom of the page, you want more of something different - so I have tags, categories, and recent posts a bit higher up.

Like I said, it’s all about presenting the right information right when your visitors want to see it.

All this is just the obvious stuff though - and by obvious I mean questions your visitor is consciously asking of the content. I’ll dig deeper into the truly subliminal questions some other time…

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