Insert and Enhance a User's Photo

Immerse customers into your interface.

Literally. Insert a photo of them.

Why It Works

• Implicit Egotism. Customers prefer stimuli related to themselves. Seeing a photo of themselves will activate positive emotions on every page (see Pelham et al., 2002).
• Personal Connection. You bridge the gap to the digital world. If customers see their photo near a product, they can imagine buying and using this product because they are physically closer to it.

How to Apply

• Optimize the Photo. Help customers feel attractive. Seeing an appealing photo of ourselves can induce purchases because we feel confident, and we blame this confidence on the purchase. Especially for hedonic purchases (Jiang et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2024).
• Photo > Initials > Silhouette. No photo? Customers prefer the initials of their first or last name because of implicit egotism, so you should display initials instead of an empty silhouette (Nuttin, 1987). Empty silhouettes can feel dehumanizing.

• Chen, R., Xu, T., & Guo, Y. (2024). Filtering a beauty justification: the effect of filtered selfies on preferences for hedonic versus utilitarian products. Marketing Letters, 1-17.
• Jiang, Z., Xu, J., Gorlin, M., & Dhar, R. (2021). Beautiful and confident: how boosting self-perceived attractiveness reduces preference uncertainty in context-dependent choices. Journal of Marketing Research, 58(5), 908-924.
• Nuttin Jr, J. M. (1987). Affective consequences of mere ownership: The name letter effect in twelve European languages. European journal of social psychology, 17(4), 381-402.
• Pelham, B. W., Mirenberg, M. C., & Jones, J. T. (2002). Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions. Journal of personality and social psychology, 82(4), 469.