Why Excel beats everything.
Happy Tuesday, everyone!
Today’s edition includes:
👾 Why Excel wins all the time.
🤞 Excited about Web3?
🤓 Curb-cut effect FTW
✂️ Why awesome beats perfect.
🕹️ Games are changing therapy.
It's not always easy to make the right choice.
Is it easier to push for investment in marketing automation or not to cause trouble for your boss?
The choice here isn’t between better or worse marketing. It’s between a better or worse position at your job.
As marketers, we often forget that everyone isn’t constantly daydreaming about efficiency, productivity, or whatever else our products do.
Our goals, like our problems, come in hierarchies.
And sometimes it’s easier to do the more convenient thing.
That’s why brilliant and intuitive apps don’t get killed by better apps.
They get killed by Excel.
You can get all judgy about the flaws of short-term thinking, lack of vision, or a failure of culture.
But the answer is much simpler - we’re people.
And sometimes it’s easier to file a difficult decision under ‘it can’t be done’ or ‘it can’t be done by us’ and get on with life.
Ignore the situation or learn to live with it.
That’s what I do. That’s what you do. And so does everyone else.
We may not notice it because of modularity - where we adjust our long-term or short-term goals to fit our current Life Projects.
Making a decision is essentially building a story where what we choose comes out on top of all other available alternatives.
Obviously, what information we use to decide can make all the difference.
And that’s a big deal if you’re in the business of convincing people to buy something from you.
Take the effort out of decision making.
You know this yourself: It takes more mental effort to pick between two or more options where the benefits are too similar or ambiguous.
No, please don’t make another list of features.
Instead, talk about the cost of not making a choice.
And the only way to do that is by addressing the anxieties and habits of your customers.
This is where You come in.
Remember this:
A choice is arriving at a clearly superior option of all the alternatives available.
And our decisions are often based on how easy it is to process the information available to us.
So, of all the effort you spend on marketing, is there anything more important than making it easier for people to pick you over everyone else?
No, there isn’t.
The right information describes how your product helps the user do more, achieve more and meet greater expectations.
Take this week to obsess over:
Simplifying the decision-making process for your customers.
Discovering their conflicting goals and delivering information that helps them adjust their relative importance.
Or by highlighting new benefits that make your product clearly a better choice.
In case you missed…
1. Are we just bored, or is there more to Web3?
It’s our latest obsession, and like others before it, it’s going to give power back to the user finally.
Or is it?
This episode of Gadget Lab breaks down the evolution of the internet from the early days to the platform economy and today.
In Web2 (aka the platform economy), user data is the currency and technology giants are its gatekeepers. Web3 promises to spread the wealth and put users in the driving seat.
How?
Through:
Blockchain: Web3 apps can be spread across our devices (vs centralised servers) and
Cryptocurrencies: As an incentive for us to become both users and custodians of the products we use.
Honestly, it’s a captivating idea. But can it be true? I’m sceptical. What’s your take on it?
2. Designing for disability is good for everyone.
I learnt about the curb-cut effect just last week - although I’ve been a fan for as long as I can remember.
You see, a typical footpath is about a step higher from the road. But there’s a tiny ramp in some places that makes it easier for wheelchairs to roll up to it.
That same curb-cut makes it just as easy for trash trucks, taxis, bicycles, and strollers to access the footpath as well.
The 'curb-cut effect: a simple solution designed for accessibility that makes life easy for everyone.
And that’s an important lesson in designing for accessibility.
As Nicola Yap writes:
We all find ourselves in different contexts where we need to adjust how we interact with our devices and the people around us. Design that provides a range of ways to interact with people and our world results in products and services that are more usable — by everyone.
Read her article. It’s really insightful.
3. Why ‘awesome’ beats ‘perfect’.
We know all reviews aren’t created equal.
But a 5-star rating can make all the difference between a successful product and one that never takes off.
New research from the University of Massachusetts Boston discovered that emotional reactions in the written text are a much better predictor of business success than star ratings.
The researchers write:
Emotionality is different from valence—whether a feeling is positive or negative—and from extremity—how positive or negative the feeling is. Rather, it’s the extent to which a reaction is rooted in emotion. “‘Awesome’ is a very positive word that also conveys a lot emotion with it,” Rucker explains. “‘Perfect’ is also a very positive word, but it doesn’t have a lot of emotionality.” The same goes for “fantastic” as compared with “perfect,” or “terrible” as compared with “dumb.”
And emotionality also applied to movie reviews and how they performed at the box office.
4. More than just a way to kill time.
Therapists started using video games to adapt to social distancing. It has opened new possibilities to help patients express thoughts and feelings through play.
(Goldman) noticed that children who struggled with in-person therapy began to come alive and develop more confidence in a virtual environment. “That’s been the biggest benefit,” he says. Today, Goldman counsels children, teenagers, and adults, incorporating a mix of gaming and talk therapy.
More therapists are turning to online games such as Roblox or Minecraft to help people who hate in-person therapy.
That’s excellent news because mental health has enough social stigma to keep people from seeking help.
I’ll borrow another quote from the article.
Connecting with patients in the realm of gaming where they feel safe can make a big difference, even if it means offering to meet up on a World of Warcraft server. “Whatever it takes to get you in the door.”
Stay curious!
Aliyar