This is a discussion paper by Ofcom‘s Behavioural Insights Hub focused on what we learned from an online randomised controlled trial involving 1,807 13–17-year-olds.
This online trial tested different behavioural techniques to encourage children to access age-appropriate user support materials designed to improve online safety (via a help centre) during the sign-up process of a mock social media platform.
As expected, very few participants clicked the link to the Help Centre when presented in the small text at the bottom of the page in the Control arm (0.5%). When language was reframed to address motivational barriers without any further changes to the design of the page, we also saw very little impact on click through rates (0.7%).
However, participants in the Combination arm, which used reframed language, increased salience, and introduced a slight forced delay, were 70x more likely to click through to the Help Centre (35.2%).
Our results indicate that many participants read and understood the information presented to them in the support materials (tested via comprehension), and encouragingly also indicates that click-through translated into engagement with the information.
This shows that choice architecture, and the way users are prompted to engage with user support materials, has a significant impact on whether they engage with them.
The technical report is also linked on this page and was produced by the Behavioural Insights Team for Ofcom.
