[Mozcon, Nathalie Nahai]

[How Gender and Culture Differences in the Web Psychology Affect the Customer Experience]

[? music ?]

Hello, mozers, how are you doing?

Quiet.

So my name is Nathalie Nahai.

I'm a web psychologist.

And if you're already getting my tweets,

I've tried to make them magically make them appear on my Twitter feed,

and they have links for my slide deck if you want to follow along—

if you're at the back and can't see some of the slides.

They might be slightly fast, so just bear with us on that one.

Okay, so I have 25 minutes to give you an introduction to web psychology.

So I'm going to give you a brief introduction.

And then I'm going to talk to you about Hofstede's dimensions

of cultural differences.

And then we'll look a little bit into gender.

We'll wrap up with some key takeaways,

and then hopefully we'll have about 5 minutes or so for Q&A.

Okay, so a little bit about me.

I do have a background in psychology.

I did a BSC in psychology back in the day,

which is a pure psych degree.

I spent 5 years in the music industry,

which is how I ended up doing freelance web design somewhat accidentally.

And it was only after a certain while that I thought,

well, humans are online, psychology is a study of humans,

why don't we look at psychology of the web.

And I thought surely someone has written about it, and no one had,

so I thought I would.

So these are some of the people—okay, that's the next slide.

So in all the research that I did for my book,

I found that there were 3 pillars that you needed to know about to succeed online.

There are 3 secrets to online success.

Hang on a sec—okay.

Know who you're targeting is the first.

Then once you have researched your audience,

you have to be able to communicate with them persuasively.

You then have to be able to use psychological techniques carefully

to be able to sell with integrity.

And it is a gray area.

You must not seem to be manipulative.

And so you have to figure out how you use

these techniques to benefit yourself and your customers.

So web psychology—I think we're missing slides.

It's jumping over 2 at a time.

So web psychology is a term I coined in 2011

to describe the empirical study of how online environments

influence our attitudes and our behaviors.

Essentially it's about the psychology of online persuasion.

And the reason I coined the term was because there is

so much incredible research that is being done all over the world

that looks at aspects of our online behavior.

This is just a sample of some of the fields of study that look at this.

So things like human-computer interaction,

cross-cultural psychology, which we'll look at today,

social psychology,

neuroaesthetics—the way that your brain responds to visual stimuli,

and behavioral economics for the ways in which we behave

in seemingly irrational fashions online and offline.

Okay.

So ultimately it's about context.

To distill it down, it's about the individual

and the cultural context of your audience—of your customers.

So we're going to look at culture.

What is culture?

I think we've not got too much time, and I also can't see,

so I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands.

So culture is essentially the programming collectively

of the human mind which distinguishes one group of people from another.

This can be across countries, organizations, micro-groups.

And this quote was taken from Geert Hofstede

who spent 40 years—he's a professor of psychology in Holland.

He spent 40 years looking at cultural dimensions across organization and countries.

He described it as a software of the mind.

So why is it important that we understand culture online?

This is just a snapshot of some of the reasons why

you need to be taking this seriously.

At the most recent count, Google Translate

was looking at over 1 billion transactions per day.

It's not true that the web is purely British-English—American-English—it's not true.

People more than ever before are going online

and looking not only at English if they're bilingual,

but also their native language.

Global Internet penetration rates are on the rise,

and that is due to the fact that smart phones

have made otherwise inaccessible regions accessible

where there is less infrastructure in emerging markets, etc.

So one of the things I want to look at is this concept of culturability.

It's the relationship between culture and usability in online design.

And it looks at the way in which cultures differentiate or influence our behaviors.

If I were to give every single one of you

in this room the same website to look at,

I can guarantee with certainty that you would each

adopt slightly different usage strategies with that same interface.

And those differences would be greater

if your neighbor was from a different country to you.

These are just some of the things that are culture specific online.

So things like the language that we use,

and I don't just mean the kind of language like English

because we all are speaking English here,

but for instance the English we would use in the UK

versus in Australia versus in Canada versus in America.

Also the body positions.

You find that in warmer-blooded cultures or warmer cultures,

people are a lot more typically expressive,

which may not be permissible in other countries.

Social contexts.

What kind of image you use will relate to the social contexts

that you're taking them in,

and some of those may or may not be appropriate.

The symbols that we use.

America is fairly patriotic,

and so we are comfortable with having images of national symbols.

In the UK we're not for some reason or another.

Apart from when the queen has a big bash or the kids get married or something.

Also aesthetics or preferences for the kinds of

visual stuff that we like also differs by culture.

So let's look at Hofstede's dimensions.

Today I'm going to look at the first 3 because they are a very exhausted list.

The first one is power distance.

And it asks the question,

whether you expect and accept unequal power distribution in your society.

So just as sort of a quick raise of hands for the states,

how much do you think on a scale of zero

it's completely unacceptable to have the poor and the rich

versus 100 it's perfectly acceptable—it's a meritocratic system.

From zero to high power distance of 100%,

would you say that the states is around zero?

At the bottom end—no?

How about the middle end?

Okay, a few hands going up.

How about the top end?

And how many undecided—you're not sure?

Okay, and other people who have just fallen asleep at their laptops.

Oh, God, I hope not.

Okay. So in the states you actually come fairly low in power distance.

You are pretty meritocratic,

and it's inculcate in the sense of the American dream—

anyone can make it, which is amazing.

I think it's a wonderful value.

If you look at the top, Russia scores really high in power distance,

and Austria is very low with 11.

The scores are out of 100 for this dimension.

So what do you do with this information online?

There are 5 key things.

Number 1, emphasize order in your website

if you're going for a high power distance culture.

Number 2, there needs to be a very clear hierarchy of content.

Your information architecture needs to be very structured.

You can also use cultural and national symbols

to make users feel more comfortable.

Authority figures are also useful.

And we're not just talking about people in monarchy or political figures.

You can also use celebrities, as in the west.

And finally, official stamps and certifications

are a great way to add credibility to these sites for high power distance cultures.

So I'm going to give you an example of what I mean of this interaction.

This is a Russian website for Aeroflot,

which is a Russian airline.

And you'll see that it's a little bit different to the

standardized western version of web design.

But there are certain things that it does very well

that relate to its high power distance target audience.

Number 1, order.

You can see that it's very clearly ordered.

Not by western standards, but you can see that there is an order.

Even the slider at the bottom,

which in the west—in the UK and the US

we usually have dots to show that there's some movement,

they've numbered those.

They've made it really clear how many there are.

Hierarchy—they've used the hierarchy.

It's linked to order.

But again, this is moving across the page left to right.

They also use national symbols.

I'm not sure if it's clear from up here,

but if you look at the top left corner, they've actually got the scythe and the hammer

and then the 90 years of authority—

we've been around for ages,

and they've also got the flag.

They have authority figures—celebrities.

And that's essentially a nice little introduction

to how you can use those dimensions for a high power distance audience.

What do you look at though if you're looking at a low power distance culture

such as the states or moving towards the bottom end?

It's kind of almost the opposite.

So you can allow your users to enjoy a looser structure.

Give them something to explore—something to kind of—

I don't know—a rabbit hole to fall down.

You're allowed also to focus on transparency and use disclosure.

We saw earlier in the day the talk about—

one of the videos was on McDonald's

and how—the lady was talking about how everything was fake.

In a high power distance culture, you would not get away with that.

It just wouldn't fly.

It works in the US because it's acceptable—transparent.

Reputation, as I mentioned, is based on merit.

You can allow people equal access.

And by this I don't mean everything should be free.

What I do mean is that the opportunity to buy tiered access

into a platform should be available to all.

You can also focus on credibility arising from earned media.

So an example of this—Israeli website Nana 10,

which is a news website.

You can see that they have a very loose structure in terms of navigation.

That's 5 rows deep of navigation.

I don't know about you, but I find that a little bit overwhelming.

If you scroll down on the page, they've got earned media,

which is common across all cultures pretty much now.

And then you also have merit-based news articles.

So this is about the community,

as opposed to about people who are in positions of power by default.

Second dimension, which is a particularly interesting one,

is uncertainty avoidance.

We're all going to die.

None of us know when.

Some of us are happier with it than others basically.

So the idea here is whether you are comfortable with ambiguity.

And there are, of course, personal differences between everyone in this room.

Some of us will be more comfortable than others.

But cultures also express a general trend one way or another—

or in the middle.

So if you're looking at high uncertainty avoidance cultures,

again like Russia,

and you start to see that they're linked between these different traits.

They're very uncertainty avoidant.

The USA is quite low.

You'll find that those countries which seem to give out

the most innovation and take the greatest risks

scored very low on uncertainty avoidance.

It's a breeding ground for innovation.

Okay, so using it online.

Number 1, if you're doing it for a high uncertainty avoidant culture like Russia—

we don't want to be threatened by uncertainty—

reduce the ambiguity in everything—in everything that you do.

How can we make this clear?

Make the navigation clear.

Make the structure of the website clear.

Make it predictable.

Assure your users that they know where they're going—

to give them a clear map.

Also avoid pop-ups and non-essential information.

Strip out all the unnecessary.

And also use explicit language and images,

and I don't mean porn unless you're creating a porn site.

But you have to be very direct.

They need to know what the message is.

This is an example again from Russia.

I love this site.

Very minimalist, very clean, very uncluttered.

It's a site for portal of goods.

I translated it into English so you can actually read some of the content.

So you'll see at the top very clear navigation.

They do have a search box so you can explore,

but you'll notice that even with the search box,

they've got subcategories,

so your search is still contained.

They have predictable assuring imagery.

You've got the image of the tractor.

It's one main image.

At the bottom just 3 options.

Incidentally, psychologically we prefer to have either

3 or 5 options where there’s a middle one.

Anything less than 7 is quite comfortable

because then you don’t end up with choice paralysis,

which is too many options and then you can’t choose.

Okay, so explicit text underneath—

very clear information as to what the website does.

And at the bottom, it’s even got a bottom that has got huge—

well, relatively huge amount of text saying what the button is for

as if the text on the bottom, register your company, wasn't enough.

They've gone to extra lengths to make it clear.

Okay, so what about places like the US—

low uncertainty avoidance?

So uncertainty embracing cultures.

Quite different.

Number 1, you can speak plainly.

Facilitate open dialogue, have communities,

have a conversation with your customers, collaborate.

Don't be overly emotionally expressive.

And this is a weird one, you can overshare.

Try not to.

You can also allow your users to take greater risks.

They want a sense of thrill,

and they want a sense of excitement.

And you can do this by introducing complexity in a wider choice of actions

within reason on a site.

And as a subset of that, navigation can also be layered

to give people greater facility in choosing their journey.

So who here has used StumbleUpon?

Anyone uses—okay, I love StumbleUpon.

It's kind of a—it's kind of a fun site.

So for those of you who don't know about it, the clue is in the name.

You basically go onto the site, write in your interest,

and then it gives you loads of stuff that you stumble across based on your interests.

And it plays on the idea of uncertainty.

You don't know what you're going to get.

You know roughly that you like art and politics,

but you don't know what you're going to get within those categories.

So you'll see from the top they've got social media icons facilitating open dialogue.

They use plain language.

Most of this information in these posts are

sourced from British-speaking countries—UK—US.

And so a lot of the posts express plain language that you get

because we're uncertainty accepting.

You also find that there are huge amounts of risks that you can take.

It's kind of—the whole concept of StumbleUpon has got that within it.

And then also there are so many entry points,

so you don't really know where you're going until you become

familiar with the platform.

They've also got complex and layered navigation.

This one—if you have not checked our this website, I highly recommend it.

This is kind of the epitome of uncertainty embracing cultures.

You land on this site—it's make-everything-ok.com.

I'm not going to tell you what it does.

Go visit it, press the button, and see what happens.

Just a little bit of fun.

Okay, so the third dimension I want to discuss with you

is around individualism and collectivism.

And we all kind of know what this is,

but ultimately it's about whether you define yourself—

your self-image in terms of I or in terms of we.

You may not know this, but English is the only language

in the world that capitalizes the letter I.

We believe our singular selves to be so important

that we capitalize it over anything else.

We isn't capitalized, us isn't capitalized, but I is.

Not any other language does that.

So this is where the US rates—pretty individualistic.

Spain is midway,

and China, as one would expect, is quite collectivist.

So what does this mean online?

So for the states—for highly individualistic societies,

number 1, key, key motivator for individualistic societies

is that our personal achievements

or the promise of personal accomplishments

motivates our actions.

If I can better, faster, richer, sexier,

I'm going to do that action in order to get myself there.

The second one is around difference in novelty.

Individualistic societies kind of give us the sense that we want to step out

and be seen and be heard—be celebrities.

So if you can give people a way in which to

experience something that is other than the norm,

they're more likely to take part,

which is where the competition and the excitement comes in.

We like a good challenge.

It's very goal oriented.

You can also use controversial language

if it's appropriate to your brand

and to your goal and to your campaign.

We'll look at that in a sec.

Also the images that we use tend to favor youth

and material symbols of success.

So the fast car and the hot girl typically.

Or if you're—I think it was Hollister in the UK did this as well—

these really hot guys completely waxed.

I don't know if this is like a thing in the states,

but they had no body hair.

I was like are you pubescent or not?

Anyway, maybe that's just me, I kind of like a little hair.

But these images of youth—these rippling men and just—

you know—swooning women.

All right, back to reality.

Okay, so this is an example of one of your websites

that I stumbled across called Nasty Girl.

And the first thing that you see is a popup.

It's excitement, it flashes up into your face, and it's animated.

What's interesting is that the language that they use is also exciting language.

So the party—all their doing is selling clothes.

There's no party involved, there's no drinking, it's just clothes,

but that's the language they choose to use.

Sign up for exclusive updates, new arrivals, events, contests, and more.

It's experiential—there's competition, there's a sense of challenge.

The word nasty girl—no one here really,

unless you're into that kind of thing, wants to be referred to as a nasty girl.

Really—maybe a dirty girl or a naughty girl, but not nasty girl.

So you can see that they've actually built this into their brand,

and it's memorable.

I mean I remember the site.

You also then have images of youth.

And it's individualistic.

Instead of like checkout or bag, they've got my tote.

So it's mine, there's a sense of ownership.

Also you have exciting language again.

So I'm going to read this out for you if you can't read it.

Soak up summer and give your retinas a thrill

with eye-popping swimwear and unexpected streaks of color.

Do you see how this stuff kind of permeates everything online?

Okay, so highly collectivist.

What happens if we're a we culture?

We all start engaging in the community.

Respect the moral tenets and their traditions and their status

because it reflects a tribal identity.

You have to be very careful with your use of imagery.

In many collectivist cultures,

and I don't necessarily agree with this or not

because of my background and my culture,

it's not permissible to show images of women.

There can be very strong gender differences,

so you have to be careful of that.

And also the other one is that sometimes

examples of people smiling too much can be seen as inappropriate.

So do your research.

Rather than youth in materials as symbols of success,

collectivists cultures tend to favor wisdom

and the experience that comes with age.

So if you use the image of authority figures who are wiser and older,

that will promote credibility to your brand.

The fifth one is important wherever you are,

but especially in collectivist cultures

where it is not okay to stand out for the fear of being ostracized.

You must protect people's privacy and security in terms of their information.

This is one of the issues that came with Google

when originally with Google+ you couldn't sign up with a pseudonym.

What happened in collectivist cultures?

People tried to create nom de plume, and they weren't able to sign up.

It was a big problem.

This is an example of a bus website.

You'll see it's highly collectivist.

There is no single image on here that is of just one person anywhere.

And also there's a nod to the favorite color red,

which promotes positive things such as wealth and luck.

Okay, I'm going to move from individualism into a little bit of gender,

and the reason that I'm going to take this opportunity to do it

is because individualistic cultures, like the states,

tend to express greater gender differences than other cultures.

And the differences express themselves in a website's usability and attractiveness.

There's an interesting element to this though

because women and men across different cultures actually

have distinctly different neural responses,

so brain activity responses to artistic and natural stimuli.

So there seems to be a biological component to these differences.

Right, so boys—and these are generalizations by the way.

Nothing that I say is a fit or a solution.

So we're talking about the Gaussian curve of distribution.

Probably about 70% to 80% of people this will apply to.

There will always be outliers.

So bear that in mind.

So generally research has shown that men really like review sites,

and they express this from the age of 7.

So there is something there—it's not just cultural.

You're also the heaviest users of videos and games.

Women on the other hand tend to be predominantly more social.

They're the heaviest users of email,

social sites in general although that does vary per type of sites,

and instant messaging.

An interesting difference between men and women—

probably the most interesting is the way in which you perceive risk online.

Risk is one of the biggest barriers to buying stuff—

to buying into what someone has to say or parting with money.

Men in general tend to be less concerned about privacy.

They are happier parting with sensitive information in general

such as their phone number, their home address, their real name.

And they are more likely to blog with their real name.

Women on the other hand, it's a different picture.

Back in the day when online shopping was fairly new,

we perceived it as more risky.

This is starting to change,

but we are still skeptical of online information.

We are much more likely to blog anonymously.

And when I did some research around this

because I blog and I have female friends who blog,

the unanimous response, I am sad to say,

was that women who get trolled tend to get trolled in a hyersexualized way,

which men just don't seem to get.

So there is an element of sexual harassment that translates online.

And actually the digital guys, you're all wonderful,

so I'm sure this doesn't happen from you,

but this is something that happens online,

and we have to be aware of it.

Women are also therefore less likely to provide accurate information

when pushed for it.

Okay, who is this for, man or woman?

Man, of course.

All right, so just a few things to out here.

As a general rule, men obviously seem to prefer

flashy, interactive, and animated sites.

And I'm not saying that women don't like this because I do like this.

I like the odd game.

But the amount—the degree to which you

build this into your website is pretty extreme.

It's also very goal-oriented and gamified,

and there tend to be many sublevels.

In comparison—I know these are slightly different sites—this is eCommerce.

This is a woman's site.

So generally, research suggests that women

seem to be attracted more to a website's colors.

Now there is something interesting here biologically.

You've got rods and cones in the back of your eyes.

The cones are what perceive color.

Typically most people have 3—we're trichromatic.

People who are color blind, typically male, tend to have 2,

and some women—this doesn't happen in men—have 4,

so trichromatic.

Trichromats see millions more colors than the rest of us.

And they did this study with rhesus monkeys—

rhesus monkeys or macaques—I can't remember.

Anyway, they did this amazing study with monkeys.

The females of which could see color, and the males couldn't.

They genetically engineered them so that the males would see color,

and they found that their foraging behaviors changed.

Typically the females would forage because they could see red,

and that was what they were foraging.

The males couldn’t.

As soon as they could see color, their physical behaviors changed.

So there is something to this that is pretty hardwired.

We also prefer clean and uncluttered websites as a general rule.

This also—I have to say in the UK seems to appeal to male designers.

I wonder if there is a link between this and neurochemistry,

so a higher level of estrogen,

which you also get in football—it’s very strategic.

Anyway, we also prefer fewer subpage levels.

Key takeaways because I'm on my last minutes.

There are 3 main things that I would like to really drive home to you.

Number 1, whatever you are doing

whether it is SEO, marketing, design—whatever it is,

you have to apply scientific rigour to your design and decision making processes.

Most of you do this anyway,

but just start from a foundation of research

of psychographic information,

and it will launch you much further much quicker

so that you can then make the best use of what tools

you have in your relevant discipline.

Number 2, if you are going for global audience,

and not everyone is,

you have to be culture and gender sensitive.

You should always research your audience

even if it's just your own culture.

And the golden rule, research your audience,

test your hypothesis, analyze the results,

and that will create amazing evolution of whatever it is that you're doing,

and it will fast track you in the quest to succeed online.

So I'm going to take questions, but before I do,

these are some of the references.

You are very welcome to check them out.

There's some further reading and some videos.

If you want to find some goodies and also my slides, which you can download,

go to the link at the top.

You're also welcome to read my book.

And you can tweet with me, and I will be at the party drinking tonight,

so I will be open there for questions.

Yeah, so do we time for some questions?

>>First we clap.

[applause]

Thank you.

[applause]

>>That was fascinating.

Now in those list of resources—because I was standing there wondering

to an average user like me,

and I wanted to understand my audience a little better—

some of those collectivism metrics and individual metrics—

if you're not in the United States, where do you go to find out

how your audience is made up?

Okay, there is a fantastic website that has got this information for free.

If you Google Geert Hofstede—

That's G-E-E-R-T.

Hofstede is H-O-F-S for sugar-T-E-D-E.

And you also Google the word countries,

it will give you—>>And you're going to tweet this, right?

>>I'm going to tweet all of this—just tweet me if you want the resources.

Geert Hofstede countries and you can see exactly where you rank.

And you can see how you rank in comparison with other countries as well.

We're going to wrap it up there—Nathalie Nahai everybody.

Thank you. >>Thank you.