Stop Being Afraid To Guide Your Clients

What is MLK was too “ethical” to push his agenda?

I see a lot of discussions today about how to make your app “ethical” and how to be “considerate” towards your customers by giving them choice.

This is the surest way to drive away customers that could benefit greatly from your product.

But first, I want to talk to you about ethics:

Is your product good?
Does it solve real problems people have?
Does it bring value to their lives?

If the answers to all the above are YES but you still think it is wrong to push people to use your product and influence their decision making, this post is not for you. Seriously, if you think that doing those things is somehow “unethical” stop reading now and go on wallowing in mediocrity.

Yesterday I went to a shop to take a passport picture and they made a brilliant up-sale move on me. After taking the serious photos the photographer women told me to make a face and kept taking pictures. I liked it and had fun with her for a few minutes. This turned an errand of necessity into a fun experience. The fun photos looked great and I could get them for a few extra bucks.

I know many of you might say she pushed me into something I didn’t need, led me, etc. But did she? I don’t have a lot of good photos, so having a few studio quality photos is a good thing. Could I have refused? Of course. But I chose (we will get back to that word) to buy them and felt like I got something valuable out of an experience that in any other shop would be tiring and boring.

The photographer also told me they don’t do this with every customer. Somehow she knows to recognize those who will benefit from this up-sale. Why did I choose to buy the pictures? Because although I didn’t ask for them, I got real value out of this experience.

Awesome pic!

Now let’s look at the “ethical” approach (which by the way is not really ethical in any way but you might just call it this way to feel good about it). Here are the facts as I see them:

• People don’t know many things they want and need until they see them.
• People have no idea who you are and what value you will give them until you actually show it to them.

Here is why the up-sale worked: I had some need for good photos and the photographer showed me the value she can give me. Boom. I was sold and happy about it. If she was “ethical” with me, she wouldn’t have taken those pictures in the first place and I would have no idea of the value I could have gained. We both would have lost. Real respect comes in the form of treating others as adults with agency and choice.

How does it reflect in the digital world?

• Make your CALL TO ACTION clear and big. I cannot stress this enough.
• Don’t treat competition of sign-up as the end of your marketing process. You need to remind the customer constantly of your value. Especially since it is so easy to discard or switch a digital service.
• Don’t be afraid of constantly course-correcting your customer. If your app is most beneficial used in a certain way, make that way dead clear and minimize other ways. Some users will always explore, but you want to give as much value to as many users you can.
• Give away free trails of your best features, for as long as you can afford. Assuming those features are really valuable, this will make a huge difference between reading about them and actually using them.
• Don’t be afraid do clearly discourage users from doing some things. This is a topic for a whole post in the future, but in short: you want the interaction between the users and the app the be meaningful. It will never be such without the users being guided and contained in a certain way, like children that need limits. As in life, same goes here: don’t be afraid to rock the boat.

I love to argue, so bring it. Otherwise, you can bring good examples of UI done this way.