insights! Episode #36: from information processing to checkout

Joubin Rahimi:
Great to have you on the new Insights episode. My name is Joubin Rahimi, and today's guest is Katja Moritz. Hi, Katja. Would you like to say a couple of sentences about yourself?

Katja Moritz:
Very happy to. Hello everyone, I'm Katja. I'm a User Experience Manager at brytes, which means, together with my colleagues, I look at our clients' shops, and we improve those shops.

Joubin Rahimi:
Great, thanks. So you're basically always immersed in how people tick. Today our topic is information. How do we handle information? How do we work with it? That's really exciting. What actually falls under information?

Katja Moritz:
Basically everything you can somehow take in. Everything you see, hear, sense, feel. We daily confronted with millions of pieces of information and must process these first. And that need energy and time and strength. And that why in some cases maybe bit easier for us to process information, in other cases bit harder. And there certain principles behind that, explaining exactly why it either one case or other.

Joubin Rahimi:
That is, when viewers watch us, it's not just about what they hear and see, but also about all the distraction around it. So if you're talking and I'm fidgeting, the viewer notices that just the same. Is that the whole sum of information you mean?

Katja Moritz:
Right. First we notice that we're sitting here. We see and hear that we're talking. We take in what's heard, have to process it all and then interpret and make sense of it for ourselves – what do we actually do with this information now?

Joubin Rahimi:
We always have too much information, don't we?

Katja Moritz:
There tends to be a great deal of information to process, yes.

Joubin Rahimi:
Let's take the bicycle example again, you know I love cycling. With components, for instance, there are thousands of similar items and products. How does my brain cope with this variety?

Katja Moritz:
Bit depends which phase you're in. If you go into shop and look into information on bikes, very likely you want to buy product that's somehow bike-related. Meaning you first need clarity for yourself, do I want to research right now, look at certain products, or have I already settled on specific one? And if you want to research, lots to consider there. Does product I'm searching for fit problem I actually have right now? If yes, where exactly do I find it? Is it shown right on homepage or do I have to click through categories? First understand page structure, if maybe not been on shop before. And there's tons of small things running in background in our cognitive processes. Especially if you've been on shop before, you know your way around. Might feel familiar, cause you've simply seen it few times already. Different systems working in background there.

Joubin Rahimi:
And that's one of the systems I'm getting at. I used to play chess, and there too we memorised checkmate patterns. And for the following reason: so that if we see something similar again, we recognise it immediately. I can imagine there's a system behind that. Is that part of how our brain works? Or have we essentially trained our brain with things that don't reflect how we actually think?

Katja Moritz:
There are basically two systems that the brain classically consists of. One system is the one that processes processes that happen subconsciously. These are very, very many small decisions that we perhaps make every day. If I want to drink a coffee and have a bean-to-cup machine at home, I press the button, but I don't think anew each time which button I need to press. Could that be the right one, the wrong one? It's simply somehow ingrained. That's this first system, which represents fast thinking, so to speak. The second system is then more for more complex processes. Example: you want to buy a kitchen, you have to make very, very many decisions, have to weigh things up. Is one drawer more important to me now, or the other cabinet? Would I rather go for the premium brand, or rather orient myself on price? These are all decisions you have to make, and for that you need information. And exactly as you say, when you see things more often, that can be a shop, a product, a certain person, then familiarity increases, because we no longer have to process this information afresh. When we take in new information, it's initially tiring and there are cognitive processes running. But once we recognise this information again later, our brain immediately knows I don't need to reorient myself to this, I already know this. That means I need less effort to process it. And because we are fundamentally lazy as humans, our brains try to expend as little effort as possible. That means it feels familiar to us, we feel somewhat more comfortable, and that's exactly the effect behind it. It's called the mere exposure effect, and it exists both in the offline world and in digital commerce as well.

Joubin Rahimi:
A retailer really faces a dilemma there. On the one hand, you say, as many products as possible, but then I have an overload of choice and options. And on the other hand, this huge selection makes shopping difficult for me.

Katja Moritz:
That can be the case, but doesn't have to be. Again, it depends a lot on the use case. If you have products that are bought regularly, that might actually work in your favour. It can of course also relate to certain display formats. If pretty much every shop you know always has its filters right at the top, and you're the only one putting them at the bottom, people will probably need a bit longer to orientate themselves. Simply because it deviates from familiar behaviour patterns that people otherwise know from themselves.

Joubin Rahimi:
There's actually already an Amazon usability standard, isn't there? I wouldn't say it's good, but it's learned. Is that an effect you see, where people say, do it like Amazon? Or can you do it better than Amazon?

Katja Moritz:
Perhaps it can also be done better. But fundamentally, it's fair to say that it's certainly easier to find your way around if you already know it from somewhere else. Whether that's Amazon or 10,000 other shops you know doesn't really matter.

Joubin Rahimi:
I'll take that on board first, thanks for that. And the variant of condensing information down, is that an option one can work on? I now have lots of information which I can put out, and from an SEO perspective everything is out there. Are there moments where you'd say it also makes sense to condense it down a bit and not show everything? Or is that never the case?

Katja Moritz:
No, that is certainly useful in some situations. Imagine you want to buy a pair of shoes and you're in a shop that has 15,000 shoes. And you have a product page displaying various products, i.e. a product listing page, and you have 15,000 products, that's simply more than anyone can process. You don't click through every single page. That means in a case like this, it might make more sense to suggest using the filters and hiding all products that aren't relevant to you – based on price, size, colour, whatever matters to you at that moment. That way, you can first reduce this information overload to allow the customer to focus, so they can really direct their attention to a handful of products.

Joubin Rahimi:
And that's certainly not easy, you don't do that with a snap of the fingers. Let me ask a completely different question: what should I have asked you that I haven't asked yet in this context?

Katja Moritz:
That's an interesting question too. Basically, we've already talked a bit about absorbing information. But of course it's also important that we can classify it – what do I do now with this information? And it might be interesting to mention that there are certain effects that help put things into relation. As an example, I could mention the anchoring effect. Do you know it?

Joubin Rahimi:
Erm, no.

Katja Moritz:
Actually been thinking about it last days, noticed example from everyday life. Talked with friend about earrings. She got new ear piercing, and asked her what it cost. Because I'd thought about it too. And she said, was super cheap, only cost 39 euros. And first moment totally confused, because my anchor point, what I consider normal, though 15 years old, I once paid seven euros for it. Meaning, even though I know rationally probably not real value anymore, that was value I anchored on. And so first moment I found these 39 euros very expensive.

Joubin Rahimi:
My checkmate example! (laughs)

Katja Moritz:
Exactly. And so it can also be that others find these €39 very cheap, because maybe they have ear piercings that cost €95. You essentially set an anchor for yourself and don't move far from that anchor. Like a ship – once it drops anchor, it moves within a certain radius. But expanding that radius takes a great deal of effort.

Joubin Rahimi:
That's then the framing you also mentioned before – putting it in a different frame than piercing an ear, no, no, we need to do a small operation or something along those lines.

Katja Moritz:
Right. And there are indeed many principles that can influence and support this information intake and processing. But they don't work in isolation either, meaning they're usually somehow interwoven, interact with each other, complement each other. In principle, any shop provider can make use of these principles themselves.

Joubin Rahimi:
Great, then I'd say make the most of it, ask questions in the comments below or send us a direct message. We're happy to answer them! Thank you, Katja.