Your customers are making terrible decisions (thank god)

Here's the uncomfortable truth about your customers:

They're not rational. They never have been. They never will be.

They'll spend fifteen minutes researching which $8 protein bar to buy, then impulse-purchase a $400 jacket they saw on Instagram. They'll abandon a cart over $5.99 shipping, then pay $12 for DoorDash delivery on a $9 burrito. They'll read seventeen reviews before buying a $20 phone case, then skip the return policy entirely on a $2,000 laptop.

This drives data-obsessed marketers absolutely insane.

But here's what most people miss: This isn't a problem to fix. It's the entire game.

The lie you learned in business school

Traditional economics assumes people are rational actors. They weigh options carefully, process information logically, and make decisions that maximize their utility.

This is complete elephantshit.

Your customers are emotional, impulsive, forgetful, easily distracted creatures who make most decisions in milliseconds based on feelings they can't articulate and wouldn't admit to if they could.

Dan Ariely put it perfectly: "We are all far less rational in our decision making than standard economic theory assumes."

This isn't an insult. This is your competitive advantage.

Because while your competitors are building websites for the rational customers who don't exist, you can build experiences for the beautifully irrational humans who actually show up.

The two brains shopping on your site right now

Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel Prize for explaining something your gut already knew: we have two thinking systems.

System 1 is fast, automatic, emotional. It's the voice that says "I like this" or "Something feels off" before you can even explain why. It recognizes faces, completes phrases, and makes snap judgments about websites in 50 milliseconds.

System 2 is slow, deliberate, logical. It's the voice that calculates shipping costs, compares product specs, and reads return policies. It's exhausting to use, so your brain avoids it whenever possible.

Here's what matters for your conversion rate: System 1 is running the show about 95% of the time.

Your customers aren't carefully analyzing your value proposition. They're feeling their way through your site, looking for signals that say "this is for me" or "this is safe" or "other people like me bought this."

This is why:

• A blue button might outperform a green one by 3%

• Adding one more form field can tank conversions by 30%

• Showing "237 people bought this today" can lift sales by 14%

• Moving your shipping costs from checkout to the product page can boost revenue even though it hasn't changed

None of this is rational. All of it is real.

The four types of irrational shoppers

Bryan Eisenberg has spent decades studying how different people shop online, and he found something fascinating: people aren't just irrational, they're irrational in predictable patterns.

He identified four buyer types that show up on every ecommerce site:

The Methodical shopper needs to understand exactly how things work before they buy. They read every spec sheet, check every review, compare every option. They're not slow because they're indecisive, they're slow because they're thorough. And when they buy, they rarely return stuff.

Show them: Detailed specs, comparison charts, FAQ sections, technical documentation. Give them the information to convince themselves.

The Spontaneous shopper wants to know why they should buy right now. They're scrolling fast, they'll bounce if you bore them, and they respond to urgency like moths to flame. They make decisions with their gut, not spreadsheets.

Show them: Bold visuals, social proof, scarcity signals, and friction-free paths to purchase. Make it exciting and easy.

The Humanistic shopper cares deeply about who else has used your product. They want to know the story, see real testimonials, and understand the people behind the brand. They're buying into a community, not just a product.

Show them: Customer stories, testimonials, user-generated content, brand values. Help them see themselves in your tribe.

The Competitive shopper just wants the bottom line. What's it cost? How fast can I get it? Is it the best? They're impatient, they're comparison shopping, and they'll appreciate you not wasting their time.

Show them: Clear pricing, ROI data, competitive advantages, express checkout options. Respect their time.

Here's the kicker: These aren't personality types. These are modes that the same person cycles through depending on what they're buying and how much they care.

Your mom is Methodical when buying a new laptop and Spontaneous when buying a candle. Your CFO is Competitive about software purchases and Humanistic about donating to charity.

This is why you can't just "know your customer" and call it done. You need to speak to all four modes on every page.

How this shows up in real money

We ran a test recently that perfectly illustrates how irrational behavior drives results.

The client had a "Buy the Outfit" module on their product pages, basically a "complete the look" recommendation engine. Smart feature. Increases AOV. Best practice incarnate.

Except when we analyzed the data, we noticed something weird: Desktop visitors from organic and direct traffic were converting worse when they saw this module. Not by a little. By enough to matter.

Why? Our research showed these shoppers were already in "I know what I want" mode. They'd searched for the specific item, clicked through, and were ready to buy. Then we interrupted them with "Hey, but what about these other six things you don't want?"

We broke their focus. Created decision paralysis. Made them question if they'd found the right product.

So we tested hiding the module for just that segment, desktop visitors from organic and direct traffic. Everyone else? Still saw it.

Result: 14% increase in transactions for that segment. $400K in annual revenue we would have left on the table if we'd assumed "best practices" work for everyone.

That's irrational behavior working in our favor. The same feature that helped some people hurt others. Not because the people were different, but because the context was different.

What to do about it Monday morning

You don't need to become a behavioral economist to use this stuff. You just need to stop assuming your customers think like you do.

Start here:

Audit one page through System 1's eyes. Pull up your homepage or your best-selling product page. Don't read it carefully, scan it like you're busy and distracted (because that's how your customers see it). What's the first thing you notice? Does it answer "why should I care?" in three seconds? If you have to squint or think hard, System 1 already bounced.

Look for places you're asking System 2 to work overtime. Forms with eight fields when three would work. Walls of text that should be scannable bullets. Choices that should have smart defaults. Navigation that requires a PhD to understand. Every time you make System 2 wake up and work, some percentage of your customers just... leave.

Stop treating all your traffic the same. You don't need fancy personalization engines. Start simple: New vs. returning visitors. Mobile vs. desktop. High-intent search traffic vs. casual browsers. I guarantee these groups are behaving differently on your site. The question is whether you're noticing.

The best part about understanding irrational behavior? You don't have to change your customers. You just have to stop fighting them.

Assume your customers are making terrible decisions. Then help them make decisions that benefit them.

Looking forward,

Brian

P.S. If you want to talk about what irrational behaviors are killing your conversion rate, just hit reply. I read all these emails, and I love nerding out about this stuff.