It’s not the price, the location, availability or customer reviews that make a successful listing on mylocal – the actual reason may make you smile!
In case you have been usually booked, but struggle sometimes to bring in new customers. We may finally know why. Researchers have discovered that one big factor affects whether users choose to click on a listing or not, and it’s not the price, the size, nor is it the location or customer reviews: it’s profile pictures.
These little profile pictures may be way more important than you’d think. (Photo: Facebook / Mylocal)
Not that users are looking for attractive listing hosts. Rather, they’re looking for hosts who “look” trustworthy.
What makes a trustworthy-looking host? We are not sure, but they thought smiling might matter. “Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn, the person is not the ‘selling product’ here,” said Joshua Majchrzack, Ceo and one of the platforms´ co-founders. “On mylocal, the focus is on the service a user needs and its local proximity. The closer a service, the better. But even so – we found that the profile pictures of the hosts are critical to their listing success.”
A swedish study about Airbnb (a platform to book accomodations), presented host photos to 600 research participants and evaluating their first impressions. They found that the platforms´ guests would pay higher prices for places with trustworthy-looking hosts, even though most participants had no idea that profile photos were affecting their choices.
“We can only confirm this statement. With the rapid growth of the sharing economy, especially in relation with local services, there is a need to investigate what makes a service beeing desirable” Joshua Majchrzack said. “Different rules and consumer decision-making are at play here, and a fuller examination of these is still needed to understand what engages local customers.” Further more, the Ceo & Co-Founder stated that their team will keep analyzing incoming data and user behaviour, in order to optimize the mechanics of their platform and increase local visits of hosted services.