How to Use Personality Science to Drive Online Conversions

How can understanding The Big 5 help your company? By helping you connect with your ideal user.

For example, companies must cater to the needs of different customers at different phases of the business’ growth. In the early days of a new technology, for instance, you’d want to serve early adopters since attracting laggards would be a waste of your scarce time and resources.

In other cases, a company would want to tailor its marketing to reach customers most likely to find value in its products or services. Understanding your customers’ personality increases the odds of your message resonating and increases the odds of a sale.

You can use what I call personality signals to attract (or repel) an ideal user based on their personality traits. These can be images, words, colors, videos, logos and pictures on your landing pages or in your branding. Let’s identify the personality traits of your ideal user and see how you can incorporate them as personality signals into your pages:

1.Openness

Is your ideal user low or high in openness? Check off which one sounds more like your ideal user:

____Highs: Love to try new things. They want adventure and are very curious.

____Lows: Gravitate towards routine, habit, and tradition. They are cautious before trying anything new.

Case Study: Location Rebel with Sean Ogle

Sean Ogle runs a company called Location Rebel—it is a membership website and blog that helps people work virtually and hack travel. Naturally, his ideal user ranks high in openness. They crave adventure. To cater to his customers’ personality, Sean embedded personality signals for his ideal user all over his landing pages.

• Personality Signal: Header Image The top image on his header says it all—be in exotic locations, work creatively, travel. He does it with the imagery AND with the words he uses. The adventure embedded in a phrase like “work from anywhere” is like a beacon for high opens.

• Personality Signal: Video On his homepage and YouTube landing page Sean also appeals to high openness with this video. People ranking high in openness like variety and they love surprise (watch until the end of the video for the big surprise…)

Openness Signals:

Depending on your ideal user, you would want to send personality signals to attract them. If you have low open users you want to make guarantees, refund options, and payment plans highly visible. This will help a low open user feel more comfortable with risk. If you want high open users you want to call them to a sense of adventure and curiosity³.

For example, in our business, we are looking for high open users. I run a human behavior lab. We teach people skills in online courses, corporate workshops and in my latest book called Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People. My ideal reader is a high achiever, loves data, is intensely curious and hates touchy-feely stuff. So I have to cater my brand, my website and my curriculum to them. I specifically signal openness. When we changed our call to action button from “Register” to “Start Learning” we increased our opt-in rate by 14%!

2. Conscientiousness

Is your ideal user low or high in conscientiousness? Check off which one sounds more like your ideal user:

____Highs: Love lists, details, formulas and organization.

____Lows: Love big ideas, strategy, and free flow.

Engineers, programmers, and developers tend to be high in conscientiousness—they need to be detail oriented and have programmatic thinking. One small error can mess up entire lines of code. Github is a software development platform and their landing page celebrates details and high conscientiousness just as much as it celebrates programmers.

• Personality Signal: Pain Point One of the pain points Github both visually and verbally highlights is “Manage your chaos.” This phrasing is like manna from heaven for a high conscientious person. And look at the visual of moving from free flow into order:

• Personality Signal: Verbal Github uses words that attract high conscientious people. Some of their headers include: “Boxes? Check.” And high conscientious people love checking off items on a to-do list. And their big call to action is “Perfect the way you work.”
• Personality Signal: Specific Social Proof Instead of saying ‘millions of users’ Github actually gives precise numbers—a great signal for detail oriented users.

Conscientiousness Signals:

Here’s the easy thing to remember with conscientiousness—highs love details because it makes them feel secure and precise. Lows are overwhelmed by details. They prefer big ideas and broad strokes⁴.

You should only signal conscientiousness if you know it is an important trait for your users to successfully use your product. For example, of you are not detail oriented you are not going to have an easy time programming on Github. If you have a product that involves lots of steps, tracking and precision you want to make sure you are signaling that to high conscientious users. If your product is more creative, free flowing and non-precise you would like users who are more exploratory and ok without checklists or steps.

3. Extraversion

Is your ideal user low or high in extraversion? Check off which one sounds more like your ideal user: 

____Highs: Love people, is very outgoing, talkative and sociable.

____Lows: Loves alone time, is more reserved, private or shy.

Case Study: Quiet Revolution with Susan Cain 

Susan Cain ushered in the quiet revolution—going after low extraversion individuals by helping them own their quiet power. She wants to signal solitude, calm, peace and quiet. Here’s how she does it:

• Personality Signal: Landing Page When you first get to her homepage you are greeted with a variety of rotating calming images—running water, rocks in a pond or a painting. No people, no groups, no laughing colleagues:

• Personality Signal: Brand Words Susan Cain has taken power from the word ‘quiet’ and integrated it into her brand as a personality signal for introverts. Her website pages are called things like, “Quiet Ambassadors,” “Quiet Schools” and “Quiet Revolutionaries.” That will not appeal to a loud extrovert—and that’s on purpose.

Extraversion Signals:

If you are trying to appeal to low extraverts you want to send the message of: “You’re safe here.” This can be done with imagery, promises, and words. On the other hand, if you have high extraversion users and want to convert them you have to appeal to their desire to “Be safe with others.” For extraverts you want to highlight a sense of community, meeting great people and tribe membership.