SXSW and Mind Control

I next attended a provocative session called "Mind Control: Psychology for the Web." Ben Scofield, a web developer who studied the brain in college, gave a lot of good advice. He argued against using web analytics to figure out what works on a web site. Instead of describing where the users click, figure out WHY they click. "If we understand why people do what they do, we can make them do what we want them to do." Make your site likable. People like pretty sites. Get people to identify with what their peers are doing. He strongly recommended following these guidelines from Stanford University. It looks like good advice. Other tips: giving things away for free, as Google does with Gmail and many other products, builds brand loyalty. On the other hand, something scarce (like Gmail was in the early days, when you needed an invite) makes people want it.