Psychological Review of Splash Page

Hey everyone,

My friends call me Jon...which makes sense because that's my name. Anyway, I've been involved in the IM world for about a week now, and I've begun to notice some very interesting trends that I wanted to touch upon. Feel free to correct me if any of these observations are way off base - I really haven't been involved in this world for very long.

Anyway, as a quick primer, I'm a organizational behaviorist by education that only recently decided to get involved in WarriorForum. I study mostly behavioral psychology, and I wanted to break down a typical splash page into some base psychological principles (from a consumer behavior point of view).

Without going into too much detail, I decided to just do a very cursory review of the first splash page that I saw (which I think is for a fairly popular product?). I could've gone on for another 20 pages easy on the issue, but this is what I came up with before I got sleepy.

My test case: The #1 IM Clickbank Product - AutoMassTraffic (I've never used this product...nor do I really know what it does...or what Clickbank is)

Anyway, let's begin:

Color Choice - According to the most recent study on visual stimulation: Green, Yellow, Orange, and Cyan capture the most amount of attention. Overuse, however, causes what's known as visual fatigue, thereby eliminating the "pop" effect completely. This causes what some people refer to as "eyes glazing over".

Test Case Analysis: Pretty heavy use of the color red, which is perfectly fine for differentiating text from the rest of the page, but does not serve as well as the aforementioned colors (known as saturated colors) to capture eye attention. Yellow highlighter is obviously a pretty common strategy to mark important text, and I think they did a perfectly good job keeping it to a minimum to prevent visual overstimulation.

Primacy Effect - A common memory phenomenon in which the first items in a list are better remember than the middle items. This is generally seen in conjunction with the recency effect - in which consumers usually remember the last item in a list. Essentially, this means that the middle part of any list is the least impactful.

Test Case Analysis: Essentially, these two effects call for an impactful headline and a convincing ending. In terms of a headline, the site certaintly has a powerful message that summarizes the benefits of the program easily, and the ending is a call to purchase with a risk of not being able to download the program again in the future. If a consumer is only going to remember two things - these would certainly be enough to provide a compelling message.

Fulfillment of Needs - There are a few generally recognized needs that are relevant in buying behavior:
1) Need of Achievement - to attain some sense of personal accomplishment
2) Need for Affiliation - to be socially connected to others
3) Need for Power - to be able control one's own environment
4) Need for Uniqueness - to be able assert one's individual identity
The best products are those that fulfill all four categories, or at least can appeal to all four.

Test Case Analysis: This product addresses each need to some extent, and does to varying effectiveness.
Need for Achievement - Constant references for the amount of money that can be made in short time appeals to a sense of personal accomplishment
Need for Affiliation - This is the weakest category that is addressed, the program does not appeal to the affiliation need strongly, and could do so by addressing how this program could allow them to spend more time with family, etc.
Need for Power - Constant references to the simplicity behind the program appeals to the power need, asserting that one can control one's environment easily and with little effort.
Need for Uniqueness - Assertion of the "secrecy" and "newness" of this program appeals to one's ability to asset one's identity (refering to other people as "losers"), which in the case of this particular consumer, might be that of an effective internet entrepreneur.

Judgement Effect - A very interesting effect that is a bit difficult to explain. An easy example to provide was a study done on car purchasers, in which an experimental group was asked, "Do you expect to buy a car in the next year?". The experimental group bought more cars that year than those that weren't asked. This is a bit of an example of the Mere Exposure Effect - where the exposure to a concept increases one's preference for that concept later on.

Test Case Analysis: Pretty big fail for this one. The copy addresses the concept of purchasing the product early, but does not force the reader to internally acknowledge and address the concept. Questions allows the reader to do this - not commands.

Persuasion Capacity - This is a concept that is severely overcomplicated, since it is nearly universally agreed upon by social psychologists on some fundamental psychological principles.
- Reciprocity: people feel the need to repay people
- Scarcity: people value that which is limited and finite
- Authority: people care about the reputation of the source
- Consistency: people desire to look consistent in words, beliefs, and actions
- Liking: people like...things that they like

Test Case Analysis: Well, obviously there are several points here that are difficult to identify...so let's take a cursory look.
- Reciprocity: Fail. The reader owes the product creator nothing and he/she knows it.
- Scarcity: Success. The author establishes the rarity of the product and a limitation of sales.
- Authority: Success. The author spends a significant amount of time establishing their credentials
- Consistency: This one is harder to judge, since it depends on the reader
- Liking: Also harder to judge, but generally a success, the author tries to speak in a friendly manner.

Loss Aversion - Another common psychological phenomenon in which people value loss much greater than gain. This is mostly due to the inability to accuractely judge benefits on an emotional or even rational level at times. Loss can be emotional understood nearly immediately.

Test Case Analysis: The site does address loss at several points, though certaintly not as much as they focus on benefits. A balanced approach may be more effective.


This is as far as I got before I got tired and my wife told me to stop. I am interested though: there is SO MUCH more to consumer behavior, influence psychology, and motivational theory that all can be applied to various aspect of internet marketing. If you would actually be interested in stuff more like this, click the thanks button down there and I'll get started on more reports.

Maybe I'll make a WSO...though I'm not entirely sure what that means. (Sorry if I sound like an idiot, I really never heard about Internet Marketing as a concept until probably 3 weeks ago).

Motivational theory establishes that social connectivity is one of the primary sources of personal success, so I thought I might as well throw myself into the fray.