Before you go any further, please take a look at this colour changing card trick from Richard Wiseman.

This video is another demonstration of inattentional blindness – you’re probably aware of the video with the gorilla dancing in the middle of the basketball game – showing that it is perfectly possible for someone to be physically looking at something and not consciously process significant information.

This is one of the reasons that consumer research using eye tracking equipment is potentially misleading. Just because someone has looked at something doesn’t tell you what they’ve mentally processed. [The other big problem is that attaching special glasses to someone and then asking them to go and “consume” is not a recipe for normal behaviour.]

Inattentional blindness was of particular interest to psychologists wanting to understand air accidents: with all the information available in a cockpit they realised it’s very easy for a pilot to be “blind” to potentially crucial visual information – like the presence of another plane.

When it comes to consumers it is common for them to not notice most of what’s around them in consumer situations. In my own work here are just a few of the examples I’ve demonstrated to clients:

• Viewers spending ten seconds looking at a choice of TV programmes and not being able to name more than the one they’ve chosen to watch
• Important product offers (like free delivery and extended warranties) being over-looked even when placed right next to the price (which IS looked at)
• Entire displays with six foot illuminated signs highlighting new products aren’t noticed by customers shopping the category

Information about the condition of a used product that the customer was actively seeking being over-looked in a product description that was just four lines long and contained only fifteen words!

The problem is that it’s very difficult to appreciate what your customers won’t see.

As soon as you do something, like put a new testimonial on your site, or put a new piece of point of sale communication in your store, you have awareness of it. It’s right where you put it. It’s impossible for you not to see it.

But your seeing it isn’t simply a matter of you noticing it. You see it because you have the psychological associations from having put it there.

Your customers don’t have these associations.

What’s more, they typically don’t come looking for most of what you put in front of them. They arrive at your store or site with a goal in mind and it is this goal that determines how they then behave, which defines what they notice.

There are two routes to understanding how well your communicating what you want to communicate.

As an example, let’s say you are running a free delivery promotion:

1. Intercept customers as they exit your store or site (without warning them in advance directly or indirectly) and ask them if they know how much delivery would be if they chose to buy from you.
2. When you get a lot of people unsure, guessing or getting it wrong you will know that they haven’t seen the huge “FREE DELIVERY” message.

Track sales when you put your message in different places. Often what seems like the obvious place to you won’t be the place your customers are ready to be receptive to your message.

When it comes to consumers, never underestimate how much they’ll miss of what you’re wanting them to see.

Image courtesy: Lee Otis