Ford’s website.
For this exercise, I chose to take a dive into Ford’s website to see what persuasions were
provided for me as the consumer. Their website is like a deep ocean of persuasion, filled with
different persuasion techniques and claims. They have put in a great deal of thought and effort to
increase and maintain their customer base.
The first technique they have chosen is the use of graphics. The moment the website loads you
are immediately staring at very large attractive slide show of photos. As each slide moves into
view you are left looking at one of their popular vehicle/vehicles in bright colors to catch your
eye. The images are placed in a scenery that you can either relate to or wish you could be at. The
choice of images is done so to trigger an emotional response. Images are often more powerful at
doing this than words are. Often people make decisions based on feelings. A person is more
inclined to buy something that makes them feel good than not and that’s what these images are
meant to do.
The next technique is the pop-up survey they use. Not long into being on their website and
survey pops up asking you for your opinion and suggestions on how they can improve your
experience on their website. This is a subtle persuasion tactic that most don’t even pickup on.
Most will decline to do the survey and not think twice about it. What they don’t realize is they
have already had thoughts they are unaware. Ford’s goal in the survey isn’t to actually get you to
take it. They want you to have that one split second of a thought of, they actually care what I
think. We are more inclined to spend our money with someone we feel cares about us and values
us.
Another technique used is the care they take with text. They minimize the use of text to provide a
clean and pleasing look to the reader’s eyes. The wording that is used is upbeat, positive, short,
and sweet. They try not to use too many words or words that are going to distract the reader for
the goal which is to keep them coming back for more. The use of specs and numbers are very
every year it’s pretty evident that their persuasion techniques certainly get the job done.