The Christmas wrap – blogging highlights of 2015

We’ve arrived at my final blog post for the year.  

And just in case you are scratching around for some holiday reading, I thought I’d leave you with a rundown of the most popular posts of 2015 as well as a few of my favourites.

Top three for 2015

Here are my top three recommended reads;

1   How to get traction in your business – whether it’s bringing a new field like behavioural economics into your business or some other idea, convincing stakeholders is a tough part of being in an organisation. Why not make it easier for yourself by using these ideas next year?

2   Is behavioural economics applicable to B2B as well? A common question, which I finally answer.

3   The Mary Poppins Principle – bundling temptation with pain is a good strategy for business and for habits

Most popular articles by topic

Here’s a snapshot of the most popular across a range of behavioural applications like web design, sales performance, customer insights, staff performance and habit formation.

Website and digital effectiveness 

• One of the best websites I’ve seen – how an online wine club is engaging customers through clever visual design and offers
• Half a billion people downloaded this, but why? – the perplexing magic of mobile phone gamification

Customer behaviour

• How to predict customer behaviour – why feedback, experience and intuition can lead us to the wrong conclusion
• How can it go so wrong when research says it’s right? – lessons from two high-profile businesses that got it very wrong

Sales and marketing tweaks

• How font size can impact sales conversion – decisions don’t end with how much you discount – there’s also how to best communicate on Point of Sale
• How to engage through a loyalty program – there are small things you can do to improve your program’s effectiveness
• To sell more quickly, round your prices – signal your eagerness to sell with some numbers magic

Staff performance

• Show me the money? Not if you want to drive staff performance – the counterintuitive finding that money can impair performance
• Why job interviews are a waste of time – you interview the Rider, but live with the Elephant
• Brilliant or crazy to offer unlimited annual leave? – find out what happened to one CEO who had the courage to do something different.
• How to motivate the unmotivated – four things to do to get others ready and willing to change

Habits for personal effectiveness

• Three mistakes to avoid – no wonder changing habits is hard when we keep doing these three things
• Two ways to kick-start habits – get yourself in the right space to change…perhaps in the new year?

Thank you for reading my blogs and your interest in what I do, and for being open to learning about the application of behavioural science to make life easier. Knowing I am writing for curious minds like yours helps push me to find new ways of thinking about and applying these techniques.

As I look forward to my fifth year of People Patterns I am so proud of being the first to do what I do in Australia, and if I haven’t already I would love to work with you directly in 2016.

If you have any feedback, ideas or random thought bubbles please share them with me via bri@peoplepatterns.com.au. Have a safe, restful and irrational Christmas.

Bri Williams runs People Patterns, a consultancy specialising in the application of behavioural economics to everyday business issues.