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Recently I went to the cinema with my family to watch a film. This is a rare occurence as we can never agree on what to see. The film was the social network. And although everyone in my family wanted to see it, I had a different reason for going.
- Image by k-ideas via Flickr
The social network is the story of how facebook was created. I think it’s true to say that facebook is probably the most influential website on the internet. Google, yahoo and others may disagree with me. But consider a few statistics from the facebook press room. There are more than 500 million active users, 50% of users logon to facebook on any given day, the average user has 130 friends and users spend 45 minutes a day on facebook. That’s influence.
- Image via Wikipedia
Mark Zuckerberg has created an amazingly successful website and business, which has generated a personal wealth of $6.9 billion in just a few short years. And I was hoping to learn how he did it. The movie did indeed tell the story of how facebook was created. But there was one line in the film that grabbed me; how does a geek with no friends create a website that’s so popular? This was a question from an amazed student when the site first went ‘live’ on the Harvard student network. It’s great question that begs an answer.
There was a clue in the site Mark created just before he built facebook. He hacked into Harvard’s database of students, called ‘the face book’ and built a site that compared 2 female student photos, side-by-side, and asked which one is best (of great interest to the guys, but perhaps not the women). His site attracted so many hits it crashed the student network. He was learning how to create a viral website.
- Image via Wikipedia
His second website was facebook, which was even more successful. In just days of the site going ‘live’ he had signed up almost the entire student population at Harvard. Okay, Harvard is full of smart, tech-savvy students who spent a lot of time online. But why was it so popular? I think the answer is it has strong psychological imperatives. Hidden human traits we all have that drive us; curiosity and addiction. Facebook is viral because you can eavesdrop on your friends. Mark tapped into people’s need to connect with friends and a morbid curiosity to know what your friends are doing. And it’s addictive. Members spend 45 minutes a day on facebook when the average time on most other websites is measured in seconds.
I’m not really a great fan of facebook, but my wife is, so I asked her why she spends so much time on it. She has a big network of friends all over the country and talks to them every day. Human connection and curiosity equals addiction. I think she’s addicted. She says she’s not! So, how can you use human psychology to make your website a traffic magnet? It’s question I think every webmaster should be asking.
One place to start is understanding what drives us. Why do we do what we do. An excellent blog to add to your favourite feed reader is psychotactics. Sean D’Souza explores the psychology of why customers buy and why they don’t. There are loads of excellent articles that get you thinking about your website and why people visit, why they stay and why they buy.
Lets dig a little deeper on why facebook was so successful when it launched. It didn’t have first mover advantage, which is often cited as the reason for market dominance, as friendster was quite popular at the time. But Mark created a few innovations that friendster didn’t have. He made connecting with friends permission-based; like the exclusive club we all want to join. He also had easy access to a willing audience; the Harvard student network. He introduced the wall, making it even more viral. And facebook reached a tipping point or critical mass quickly. If all your friends are on facebook, you will join even if you don’t like the site!
Getting back to your website, I suggest you do a little market research, but this time looking for psychological drives. Where do your visitors congregate online? Why do they congregate there? Who or what are they looking for? What psychological factors drive them? Are they there to solve problems? What are their problems? These are the questions you need to be asking.
- Image via CrunchBase
I’m familiar with sitepoint’s webmaster forums, so I will take this as an example. Sitepoint forums have 402,000 members, so a great many webmasters congregate there. They congregate there because they are looking to make a connection with other webmasters. They often have problems and are looking for solutions. A forum gives them the opportunity to ask questions and get answers, or find the same problem others are having and see if they’ve solved it. There is curiosity at work as well as a need to connect with people like them. There is probably more I could deduce from studying sitepoint forums that’s relevant here.
But the question is; how can you use the same strategy in your niche for your website. For example, I could add a webmaster forum to my blog. Other webmasters have done this with great successful. Lisa Irby has built website babble with more than 8000 members. This is just one possibility, there are many more. And it only surfaced because I looked at a different way of attracting traffic. You can do the same. Even if you think you’ve done the market research, do it again but look for the psychological drivers of your ideal visitor or customer.
So, a traffic magnet is a website people are keen to visit. But how do you make them keen on visiting your site? I don’t pretend to know the answers or the best strategy to use. But I do know you need to ask the right questions, extract the psychological drivers, find answers, implement your ideas and test them by watching your website traffic statistics closely.
