No. 29 in a Continuing Series

Morphing the Web
Any good salesperson can quickly size up how a prospect thinks and modify his or her sales pitch to match the prospect’s cognitive style. Now this chameleon-like quality has found its way to the web in a process dubbed “website morphing” by MIT researchers.

In an article published in the Summer 2009 MIT Sloan Management Review, recent research by Professors Glen Urban, John Hauser, Gui Liberali, Michael Braun and Fareena Sultan, demonstrated that web-originated purchases of telecommunications equipment increased by as much as 20% after morphing the site to match an individual’s cognitive style. For example, analytical or deliberative thinkers typically dissect messages into component pieces, while more holistic or impulsive thinkers tend to review information more quickly and react instinctively. These differences may be reflected in pages ranging from complex and text-heavy approaches for more analytical thinkers, who need to absorb large quantities of information before taking action, to very visual sites with large open spaces and simple directives for more holistic thinkers. Based on a user’s first few clicks through the site, the website can instantly “morph” into the format that best fits the user’s cognitive style.

Applied Marketing Science carried out the marketing research in the original application of website morphing concerning broadband service offered by the BT Group. AMS is now working with the MIT team and a large Japanese bank on a study that implements a simple form of web morphing to increase sales of loan cards. Since research has shown that Japanese consumers can vary from being very hierarchical to very egalitarian in their social beliefs, the website morphs to reflect these 		differences in the terminology presented to each user - for example, some bank personnel were deemed “advisors;” others were “peers.” Other variables included in the study were color choice, word choice, page complexity, and level of personalization. To date, results of this study have been quite promising.

There are a number of simple steps companies can take to start to apply these principles to their own websites, including:
  1. Developing website navigation paths that coincide with the web team’s own styles
  2. Designing home pages with options that help identify the cognitive style of each visitor
  3. Undertaking a priming study to identify click patterns among different types of users
  4. Programming the site to reflect these cognitive styles and determine the best morph for each
  5. Measuring results of these changes and making further modifications as indicated

This research holds great promise for changing the ways in which we approach customers and differentiate ourselves to prospects in cyberspace. To read the full text of the MIT Sloan Management Review article, please visit the Sloan Review website at www.sloanreview.mit.edu.

—Bob Klein
bklein@ams-inc.com

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