Blink… Did Your Credit Union Catch that Opportunity?

by Lyle Heller, CU-VO

With deference to Malcolm Gladwell, we are continuing an exploration of communication and credit union success.  To restate, our interest is communication with people who become members and members that use credit union services.

We briefly touched on the type of words that may have an impact on responses from members (or prospective members).

There is another aspect as well.  Gladwell explored the issue in his book “Blink” where he discusses “rapid cognition”, the fact that your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions about a situation.

Gladwell mentions that we have been taught to analyze and gather data before making an informed decision.  But the reality is that we don’t.  Just look at data regarding time web visitors spend on a website or channel surfing.

Google recently issued an Analytics Benchmarking newsletter of “hundreds of thousands” data sharing websites for which data was reported.  Google states average time per visit has declined to 5 minutes and 23 seconds.

We know individual website situations can be dramatically different.  For example the author has monitored two different websites for 15 months.  One site remains consistently at 54 seconds per visit, the other has remained at 5 minutes and 22 seconds.  (Note: both websites are informational only and have no online or banking functions.)

Anecdotally, we all have experience in googling for something and find ourselves making a decision within seconds of whether to stay and look or go on.  So why?  What causes the quick decision?  After all, we were looking for something.  This is different than walking down the shopping mall and looking in display windows only because that store was on our path to our destination.

What causes the double-take?  In one of my psych classes from a galaxy a long time ago, we learned about “selective perception”.  (I think others in the class learned, I persevered.)

Selective perception is a tendency to see things according to our beliefs and interests more than the things really are.  And we react accordingly.  That’s a reason placebos work as well as they do.

How does this affect your credit union?

In our previous article the concept of “personality” of a credit union was introduced.  Suppose your credit union is primarily a teacher’s credit union. We find a number of icons that will most likely be present on such a website.  Perhaps it’s an apple.  (My wife, a retired school teacher, has enough apple Christmas tree ornaments received as student gifts to start our own shop.)

Have you analyzed the impact of those icons on your website?  Do visitors stay longer if the graphical elements are present?

One item that shows up frequently in analysis of website visitor times is progression of visitor’s eyes and attention.  Website visitors tend to look at plain text, then switch to faces/people and then perhaps back to textual material.  If the face or person is someone the visitor knows more time is taken before moving on.

The difference between succeeding and struggling is extremely small, but significant.  Take a look at the impact of a 1% change for a typical credit union of 16,000 members.  (Assume the change is an increase or decrease of members.)

Suppose a credit union chooses a new website design.  There are three possible “outcomes”; no impact, a positive impact, or a negative impact.

If changing the website had no impact, then development costs are the risk.  If change resulted in a 1% improvement in membership and earnings increased by $10,240, then the change was good.  On the other hand, if change has a negative impact, then there is a loss of $10,240 and an “opportunity loss” of $20,480.

Are your credit union visitors “blinking” and moving on?  Would a 1% increase in average visit time result in improvements?  What is the average visit time for your credit union?  What message is most likely to result in acceptance by the credit union member?

Would a visitor “blink” if you could talk to them personally?  Would a visitor become a member if you could talk to them personally?  Would a member choose the credit union service if you could talk to them personally?

Blink, perceive, and respond.  Small improvements may have larger consequences than you thought!

In our next article further insight into this topic and we will begin to identify how it may be implemented in your credit union will be provided.

This series is authored by Lyle Heller of CU-VO.  Mr. Heller holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from University of Wisconsin – Whitewater and a Masters of Business Administration in Production and Operations from Marquette University.  Mr. Heller served as Executive Vice President of two CUNA organizations.  He has lectured in at the university level in Quantitative Decision Analysis, Simulation, Systems Analysis, and Marketing for more than ten years.  Additionally, he was a top-ranked winner of the 2005 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan contest.  CU-VO is a strategic partner of CUNA Strategic Services to provide video overlays to credit unions.  Learn more at www.cu-vo.com and follow CUVOTweet.