The Messy Middle
The Messy Middle is a term coined by Google to describe the actual conversion journey. It was based on Google’s own extensive research into how purchase decisions are made. Here is what they had to say:
“Journeys were recorded using screen capture audio and video, while the shoppers talked us through what they were doing. The Behavioural Architects then analysed the journeys through the lens of behavioural science, annotating the video playback with the different cognitive biases they observed. After watching the recordings, we made an initial attempt at describing what we’d seen. On a Post-It Note we drew the purchase trigger at the top and the purchase itself at the bottom, and in the middle we drew this…
In between those two points there is a winding, scrawled squiggle, which seemed a reasonable way to represent our first significant discovery
There are no typical journeys. Instead there is a confusing web of touchpoints that we likened to spaghetti, not least because it was clear that this would be a real mess to clean up.”
The quote and drawing above is from the 2020 Think with Google document “Decoding Decisions The Messy Middle of Purchase Behavior.” If you don’t want to read a 98 page research paper, no worries we got you covered. Check out the 5 part blog series for some insight.
In Google's own words
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