Confirmation Bias: How It's Hurting Your Website Conversions

Every business owner I know is unhappy with their website conversions. They invest in quality traffic but struggle to convert it into leads and sales.

Usually, when they ask us for conversion rate optimization services, they’re worried about how persuasive their messaging is or whether the design of their website is hurting results.

What they don’t realize is that there’s another, more critical key to unlocking conversions.

We humans have won the evolution lottery in many ways (thank you, opposable thumbs), but we’ve never overcome our tendency to take shortcuts. And of all the shortcuts we take, confirmation bias is probably the biggest.

Let’s take a closer look at what confirmation bias is, how it affects us as humans, and more particularly, as marketers. Then we’ll uncover the only marketing approach that will beat our biases and improve our website conversion rates.

Learn how our fully managed CRO services can remove the biases that impact your website’s performance.

What Is Confirmation Bias?

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, favor, and recall information that supports our existing beliefs or hypotheses — while disregarding or undervaluing evidence that contradicts them — so we can confirm that we’re right or process information faster.

Confirmation bias isn’t intentional. It’s more of a mental management system than deliberate self-deception.

Why does confirmation bias occur? Why are we so prone to it?

This marketing statistic may provide some insight: We are exposed to anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 ads a day. Add to that our busy lifestyles. We’re constantly juggling careers, families, friends, and self-care. Our brains are processing so much information at any given moment, we need decision-making shortcuts, or heuristics, to avoid overwhelm.

We like to be right. So we seek information that confirms and supports our personal beliefs and habits while ignoring innformation we disagree with.

Three Types of Bias

There are three types of confirmation bias:

Biased search for information
Biased interpretation of information
Biased recall of information

Biased search for information

People tend to test hypotheses, or ideas, by searching for evidence that’s consistent with their current beliefs. They phrase their search queries to find information supporting their expectations and gather data to prove their preexisting ideas are true.

We see this a lot in conversion optimization. When running an AB test for the first time, a marketer is likely to design the test to prove their idea right. By contrast, experienced optimizers know to design AB tests to disprove their hypothesis.

Interestingly, when we’re asked for information, the way the question is phrased can influence the way we answer. If asked, “Are you happy with your job?” we’re more likely to answer positively. If asked, “Are you unhappy with your job?” we’ll be more likely to disclose the things we don’t like.

Biased interpretation of information

We often use logic to defend illogical beliefs, and you can see that in the way we interpret information. For example, a 1979 Stanford study found that, when given compelling evidence for and against capital punishment, people used the data to support their original viewpoint and gave more credence to information that supported their beliefs.

This study also found that “disconfirmation bias” makes us more resistant to information or viewpoints that contradict our existing beliefs. We set a higher standard of proof for any hypothesis that contradicts our current expectations. We also work harder to disconfirm evidence by questioning the validity of the source or looking for flaws in the argument.

Biased recall of information

You’ve likely heard the term selective recall. It exists because our brains have pre-existing folders to store that information.

Studies have found that any information that aligns with prior expectations and beliefs is easier to store and recall than information that does align with our beliefs. As a result, we tend to remember information that reinforces our expectations.

Confirmation Bias Examples

When your brother calls you for advice but only accepts it if you tell him what he wants to hear, you’re seeing confirmation bias in action. He believes he found the solution and wants your stamp of approval.

You see confirmation bias in business when a company cuts a sponsorship deal with a controversial figure, and the brand is boycotted. Like Nike’s 2018 ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who, two years earlier, began kneeling for the national anthem in pre-game ceremonies to protest racial injustice.

Nike’s ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick

Now, let’s look at some examples of how confirmation bias impacts our ability to process and parse data — which is key to our ability to parse your website data and understand your visitor’s behavior.

We all know how easy it is for bad actors to distort or manipulate data. What we don’t realize is how often we do this to ourselves, interpreting information in a way that distorts our own understanding.

Remember, we like to take shortcuts, so when we see this graph of ice cream sales compared to forest fires, what do we conclude?

Graph of ice cream sales compared to forest fires, showing a high correlation

Ice cream sales and forest fires are so highly correlated, ice cream must cause forest fires.

Meanwhile, looking at this next graph of ice cream sales vs. weight gain, you might assume ice cream will help you lose weight.

Ice cream sales compared to weight loss - showing no correlation

Ice cream may be the dieter’s dream dessert!

This is a ridiculous assumption, so we don’t take it seriously. But what happens when our conclusions are less obvious? Bias affects our ability to see the truth. It leads us to ignore gaps in our data. And it leads to poor decision-making.

For example, both of our ice cream graphs ignore a third issue, which is seasonality. In the summer, we tend to watch our weight so we’ll look good in our bathing suits, and it’s hot, so we love to eat ice cream.

With all of this in mind, let’s apply this same tendency to our marketing and conversion rate optimization process.

The Effects of Confirmation Bias on Your Marketing Results

The Cognitive Bias Codex, rendered by John Manoogian, lists 188 cognitive biases, grouped into four categories.

a circular graph listing many cognitive biases, sorted into 4 categories

The Cognitive Bias Codex illustrates the number of biases we can fall prey to.

According to the codex, cognitive bias tends to kick in in four scenarios:

We’re processing too much information
We don’t have enough context or meaning for that information
The information we’re processing has a higher priority or is used frequently
We need to make a decision or act quickly

Show me one marketer who isn’t processing too much information and making quick decisions without full context! Our work is most definitely the product of unconscious confirmation bias.

And it may explain why we put things on our sites that support what we believe instead of what our customers need to hear to convert. The typical marketing project includes researchers, copywriters, designers, and stakeholders, all with their own preferences and biases. In a worst-case scenario, this can be disastrous:

Researchers who gather information about the market and competitor products have a tendency to search for the information they expect to find, confirming their preexisting beliefs.

The copywriter may or may not evaluate the research, but if they do, they look for evidence that supports their preconceived ideas. Then, when drafting the copy, they choose words and phrases that speak to their learning styles and convey their biases.

The designer creates a visual design based on their own preferences about color and fonts. Then they bring in an executive and team members to review the design — who will all ask for changes based on their biases.

This is a worst-case scenario, but it does show the potential for confirmation bias to dampen your website conversions. You and your team are not immune. You have a tendency to favor information that supports your individual biases. And each of you works in a way that feels comfortable to you.

But these biases can kill a good landing page. They affect your organization at the deepest levels. And they can keep you from achieving the results you know are possible — which is why our Conversion Scientists® rely on science and the scientific method.

The Only Way to Avoid Confirmation Bias

Because everyone is susceptible to confirmation bias, we need a workaround. We need a way to get our biases out of the way so we can make better decisions and get better results.

For marketers, that means discovering what’s really going on with our visitors by thinking like a behavioral scientist.

The good news is you’re already doing it. Every time you post something on social media and check how many likes, comments, and shares you have, and then do more of those posts, you’re using behavioral science.

You’re using other people’s behaviors to determine what you’re going to do next. We just want to formalize that process to ensure our biases don’t override our natural tendencies.

That’s where the scientific method comes into play. When you come up with an idea for a landing page, instead of creating three mock-ups and choosing the one you like best or is most similar to your competitor’s page, you test which one works.

A scientific approach to conversion optimization, or CRO, removes personal biases, opinions, and preferences from the process and forces us to make data-driven decisions. It involves formulating hypotheses, conducting experiments, and analyzing results to draw conclusions.

Here’s what the scientific process looks like when applied to the CRO process:

Do some research.
Generate and prioritize some ideas.
Research an idea.
Design a landing page that proves our promising idea wrong.
Run tests.
Listen to what the data says.
Evaluate.
Iterate: Generate more ideas, investigate, test, listen, repeat.

When we follow this process, we can keep ourselves honest. Instead of adopting the highest paid opinion in the room or implementing web designs that may or may not work, we can use data to increase conversions on the website or marketing campaign.

It’s time to remove the biases that interfere with your website conversions. Get started today by scheduling a free consultation with one of our Conversion Scientists®.

Author
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Brian Massey

Conversion Scientist™ at Conversion Sciences

Brian Massey is the Founder and Conversion Scientist™ at Conversion Sciences, a sought-after international speaker, and author of Your Customer Creation Equation. He is passionate about transforming websites through a steady diet of visitor profiling, purposeful content, analytics, and AB testing.

Expertise: conversion rate optimization, AB testing, marketing strategy, digital marketing, analytics, landing page design, computer programming, entrepreneurship

Speaking: IBM, Inbound, LeadsCon, Content Marketing World, Affiliate Summit, and more

Books and Training: Your Conversion Creation Equation, Video CRO, Marketing Videos that Convert, CRO Best Practices

As Seen On: ClickZ, Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Conversion Sciences Blog, Intended Consequences podcast

Education: Texas A&M University, BS Computer Science and Management