62. People Respond More to Anecdotes than to Data

In my book Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, I explain that most mental processing occurs unconsciously. People are unaware of this unconscious processing, and it’s easy to give more weight to information that we’re consciously aware of. It’s easy to forget that information is coming in and being processed from many sources. It’s easy to forget that people are processing emotions too.

Let’s say you have to make a presentation to the department heads at work about your latest conversations with your customers. You interviewed 25 customers and surveyed another 100, and you have lots of important data to share. Your first thought might be to present a summary of the data in a numerical/statistical/data-driven format, for example:

• 75 percent of the customers we interviewed...

• Only 15 percent of the customers responding to the survey indicated...

But this data-driven approach will be less persuasive than anecdotes. You may want to include the data, but your presentation will be more powerful if you focus on one or more anecdotes; for example, “Mary M. from San Francisco shared the following story about how she uses our product...,” and then go on to tell Mary’s story.