Podcast 16: The evolution of experimentation, with Tim Ash, Author of unleash your primal brain’
Tim Ash (best selling author, marketing expert and web design pioneer) talks about the evolution of human behaviour and its application to digital marketing in the latest episode of the Digital Growth Hacking podcast.
Who is Tim Ash?
Tim is an expert in user-centered design, persuasion, understanding consumer behaviour, neuromarketing and landing page testing. Tim has been recognised by Forbes as a Top-10 online marketing expert and by Entrepreneur Magazine as an online marketing influencer to watch.
In the mid-1990s Tim became one of the early pioneers in the discipline of website conversion rate optimization (CRO) and went on to co-found Site Tuners who have created $1.2 Billion USD in documented value for 1500 clients in 56 countries.
Tim now spends his time sharing behavioural insights and their implication in online behavior with audiences around the world by publishing books (Unleash Your Primal Brain & Landing Page Optimisation) and talking at industry events.
Key takeaways from our chat with Tim:
The problem with online experiences
“The fundamental issue that we face hasn’t changed, which is that most web experiences are still designed with what I call ‘the megaphone’. It’s the company broadcasting to the world about how great they are. And the notion of user-centred design is only now beginning to ingrain itself into the minds of marketers.
Focuses for website design
One of the things that we should be testing is removing things. That’s a routine part of our strategy. What can we get rid of on this page to lighten the load and scrape off some of the barnacles? You shouldn’t always be thinking about adding things, often, it’s about simplifying the experience, even the stuff you’ve validated and implemented, you should think about removing those as well.”
Why neuromarketing and evolutionary traits are the foundations for decision making
“I would conservatively say that out of the $1.2 billion USD documented values that Site Tuners created for clients while I ran it, probably three quarters (75%) was due to durable neuromarketing principles. In other words, I think there’s a mistake in the current approach. It’s Clubhouse this week, VR next week and hologram suppositories the following week. I don’t know what the new technology is going to be, but I can tell you that the thing you’re trying to persuade hasn’t changed, that’s the human brain. So if you want a durable career in marketing, stop talking about technology and start learning about evolutionary psychology. That’s the route. That’s the foundational stuff.”
Why evolutionary psychology important to marketing success
“You want to understand what makes us tick, how we act, the quote unquote, irrational biases we all have. Start studying psychology and how we got here. We picked up things along the way from the earliest forms of life that are still inside of us. There are some distinctly bizarre recent things that make us human, for sure. But you need to retrace that whole evolutionary arc to understand what motivates people and how they really make decisions.
Digital Growth Hacking – Australia’s first podcast dedicated to all things experimentation, CRO (conversion rate optimisation) and personalisation hosted by New Republique’s Co-founders Nima and Stacey Yassini.
Topics or guest submissions: hello@newrepublique.com
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