New research on the success of an Adidas ITV advert shows us an important psychological factor which will increase the success of any web site. The research looked at the follow-up viewers took following an interactive advert for Adidas.

The advert achieved only a small click through rate of 1.38%, but the reasons for the click through and subsequent interaction are revealing. Six out of ten people did it merely for curiosity and the next most important reason was to see exclusive footage about Adidas. The message in this bit of data is clear – provide your web site users with something that will provoke curiosity and make it exclusive, not available anywhere else.

The research also showed that those interacted with the Adidas advert were also the biggest proportion of people who went to an Adidas shop. Only 18% of the advert viewers subsequently went to an Adidas store, but double that number visited after using the interactive features. In other words, interaction engaged the viewers more. This engagement also translated into sales with 20% of the interactors buying from a shop, compared with only 9% of those who did not interact.

Overall, 75% of the non interactors took no action of any kind, compared with 25% of the interactors. This suggests that interacting is enough of a trigger to take action.

So, if you want people to do something as a result of going to your web site, this research suggests you need to build in interactivity and you will increase your success.