Your Customers Aren’t Lazy: How to Use Curiosity to Drive Conversions
3 MIN READ
We tend to assume people are lazy; that, given the choice, they will always take the path of least resistance, and a great deal of conversion-rate advice is built around that assumption. Brands are told to remove as many clicks as possible, flatten every step of the buying process, and to never ever make potential customers do anything they don’t absolutely have to do. And yet, a 2025 study on the link between curiosity and cognitive effort avoidance tendencies may suggest otherwise.
Across multiple experiments, people were asked to rate a series of trivia questions by how curious they were about the answers. They were then given a relatively onerous mental task to complete in order to unlock each one and, as it turns out, curiosity reliably won out over people’s natural tendency to avoid mental effort.
The pull of curiosity, however, has limits. The moment the researchers guaranteed people the answer no matter what, most abandoned the laborious task and took the easy way out, though notably a fair number still chose to work even when they didn’t have to. In other words, people aren’t lazy so much as efficient, declining effort that won’t change the outcome while happily spending it when it’s the only route to something they want. For a brand, that distinction is everything: A real sense of curiosity will motivate most people to engage, to answer, to wait, to click through, but only when that experience is the only way to get what they want.
Now, it might be easy to read this as good news for a brand, since an efficient customer who buys fast and leaves is exactly what a frictionless funnel is built to produce. The trouble is that these quick, no-effort buyers are often the least valuable in the long run. Think about it: they’ve shared no data, joined no lists, formed no relationship, and have little reason to ever come back. In fact, turning a one-time buyer into a loyal customer often takes a bit of effort first, whether they’re handing over an email, taking a quiz, joining a waitlist, or signing up for your loyalty program. That effort tends to deepen their attachment rather than cost you, because people value their own investment.
Putting Curiosity to Work
Product-Finder Quizzes
A quiz like “your signature scent based on your vibe” or “the wine and cheese pairing for your mood” works because people are curious about a playful, personal answer, and that curiosity is worth an email address to satisfy, even though they could technically piece together something similar on their own.
Do: make it fun and specific enough that your version beats a generic search.
Don’t: ask for the email before giving them anything, or serve a result so generic they wish they’d just Googled it.
Launches, Waitlists, and Reveals.
Teasers and countdowns run on curiosity, turning passing interest into a list of invested people before they’ve purchased a thing.
Do: keep the reveal inside your funnel, so waiting or subscribing is the only way for folks to find out.
Don’t: hand the full product to press and influencers. You want your audience to stay curious.
Email Subject Lines
A subject line that piques interest earns an open, which is everything in a channel you actually own.
Do: use the subject line to raise questions the email answers
Don’t: spoil it in the preview text before anyone clicks.
Packaging and Unboxing
Unboxing is a rare moment when a customer is fully engaged after the sale, which makes it the perfect place to offer a surprise in exchange for one more small action.
Do: dangle a mystery gift or perk for doing something extra, like leaving a review or setting up a reorder.
Don’t: make the “surprise” a 5% code they’ve seen a dozen times and won’t value enough to complete the action.
Loyalty and Rewards
A loyalty program should be upfront about how its core points and tiers work, which means the real room for curiosity is in the surprise rewards layered on top for customers who keep showing up.
Do: publish the program format clearly and then add unannounced perks that appear once someone hits a certain level of use.
Don’t: hide the mechanics people need to understand; save the mystery for the bonuses.
Curiosity is one of the most underutilized assets a brand has, precisely because it runs counter to the instinct to smooth everything over. People will often gladly lean in when there is something worth finding out, and those small moments of effort are often where loyalty takes root. Brands that understand this will stop treating every click as a cost to be eliminated and start asking a better question: Is what they are offering worth being curious about in the first place?
