Facing Up

Humans are social creatures.

This biological evolutionary characteristic has led to the explosion in social media, cities and communal living, and new languages and dialects from neologisms to memes.

On a smaller scale, though, it’s also going to affect your landing pages.

Studies show that using images depicting human faces can greatly increase conversion. This is because we are more likely to trust other people over faceless text or robots. Except in Convertri explainer videos, where we like a bit of mystery.

For example, if you’re thinking of going to a movie later, you’d want to look up some reviews. If you went online, you’d likely be exposed to hundreds of reviews, all in text form. And they may have some very good points about the plot or the special effects, which you’d take on board.

But then you’d ask a friend – or even a random person on the street, who you saw coming out of the movie, what they thought. And you’re more likely to trust the person who you’re talking to in real life, even though the online reviewer may have written their review just after coming out of the movie.

This is because our brains receive more information when talking to a real person. We’re also processing body language, facial expression and tone of voice, and extrapolating a lot more juicy data than if we were simply reading a few lines of text on the screen. And, to our human brains, when it comes to making decisions, more information is almost always better.

So talking to someone face to face is like reading a long landing page, stuffed with social proof, testimonials, FAQ’s and more – even if they only actually say a couple of sentences.

But, as it turns out, we don’t actually need to get this trust from real life interaction. Our brains can process all this extra information even from a still image.

And that’s why adding pictures of humans works.

When 37signals, a lead generation company, decided to test a plain-background page against a shorter one with a picture of a woman smiling at the camera next to a testimonial, they increased signups by 102%.

VWO, a blog about conversion rate optimisation, ran a test on a pop-up with a call to action to contact the blogger. Variant A had a stock icon of a telephone, and variant B had a photo of the blogger himself. The inclusion of a human face in the pop-up increased conversions by 48%.

And look at me – I’m just an animated avatar, but my creators decided to include me in that video up there instead of just my disembodied voice. Neat, huh?

Some interesting experiments have been done to try and figure out what exactly qualifies as a trustworthy “human” face to our brains. For example, Medalia, an art shop which sells African and Carribbean art online, decided to split test images of portraits versus the artists who painted them. The paintings converted at 8.8%, but when replaced with artist photos the conversion rate jumped to 17.2%. That’s an increase of more than 95%, so almost double.

Blogger Alwin Hoogerdijik decided to split test his Movie Collector product page using cartoons versus real life people, and the results were pretty impressive. Using real people instead of cartoons increased sign ups by 5.1%, sales by 35.3%, average purchase value went up by 15.6%, and total profits were 53.9% higher after only seven days.

So, as it turns out, we need real life human being faces to be able to establish trust. But, nothing is that easy, so it should come as no surprise that when it comes to trying to create a connection, you need to be super-aware of your market, and bear in mind it’s always changing.

Take stock photos, for example. A few years ago, they were a genuine low-cost solution for small businesses and large corporations who wanted to create the impression of a dynamic office environment on their website without the expense or hassle of a photoshoot. But now… stock photos of these are kind of laughable. They’ve been done to death, and just turn customers off.

The photos haven’t changed, nor has their affordability or suitability. But it’s customers’ shifting response to this type of marketing which has spelled out its doom.

That doesn’t mean stock photos are dead and you need to step up your selfie game. It just means you need to pay attention to who’s buying what you’re selling.

Including generic humans is good, but humans performing tasks or experiencing life related to your target market’s desired outcome, are even better.

So look at your product or service, and think about how your customers want to improve their lives with what you sell.

All in all, you need to establish trust to make a sale, and human faces act as a kind of shortcut. Face equals faith, you might say. And you can trust me, I’m a robot.