There’s a concept in psychology that’s referred to as the “curse of knowledge.” This is a cognitive bias that occurs when someone with a certain level of knowledge assumes that those with whom they are communicating have the same knowledge.

Due to this cognitive bias, the person uses language and jargon that their audience may not understand. This often demonstrates a lack of empathy toward the audience and awareness of their needs and desires.

Unfortunately, the curse of knowledge is common among e-commerce retailers that assume their customers and prospects have the same level of knowledge about products and services that they do. In the health and beauty industry, for example, retailers sometimes play up technical scientific research to try to communicate a benefit to customers. But if customers don’t understand the research or the terminology being used, they won’t understand the benefit and probably won’t buy the product.

Icons can cause confusion and lost sales

The curse of knowledge can sometimes be seen in the design of e-commerce websites. This happens when site designers, often in an effort to be creative or eye-catching, replace copy with icons that end up causing confusion and resulting in lost sales and revenue.

An online furniture retailer used a confusing icon to try to tell customers that lighting was available to be purchased along with pieces of furniture. They placed with word “Available” alongside a lightbulb icon next to pieces of furniture. However, most customers thought this meant that the furniture was available and in stock.

In fact, 80% of customers in a user test did not associate the word “Available” and the lightbulb icon with lighting; instead, they thought it meant the furniture was in stock. The only customers who understood the icon were those who had already made a purchase on the site and had already experienced the icon.

A major UK retailer performed a test in which they intended to redesign their website header by using icons rather text, a common UX trend that we have seen over the last few years. They replaced text links for ‘My Account,’ ‘Basket’ and ‘Help & FAQs’ with icons which are commonly used across ecommerce websites. It became clear quite quickly, however, that this wasn’t the right decision. There was a 4% decrease in conversion rate which would have led to a £300,000 revenue loss in one year. Even worse, there was a 10% decrease in conversion rate when we looked specifically at new customers.

The retailer stopped the experiment after just 10 days. This reinforces the importance of performing user testing and research before making changes like this to avoid changes that might seem logical but actually result in lost sales and revenue because customers can’t complete the purchase journey.

Don’t make dangerous assumptions

Be careful not to fall victim to the curse of knowledge when making important decisions about your e-commerce website design, content and layout. This means not assuming that your visitors have the same knowledge and understanding that you do. Keep your language and terminology simple, explain everything clearly and perform user testing before making any big changes.

And remember: Just because designers think a particular icon or graphic element looks cool or fits the latest design trends doesn’t mean your customers will understand it. As these retailers learned, using cool icons that lead to customer confusion can be a costly mistake.

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