Meanwhile, I got annoyed by a text message from my mobile service asking me to use digital invoices from now on, but expecting me to type in a long URL they included to activate this service. Which I did.

Sound familiar? Whether you like it or not, all compa- nies have persuasion goals, and many are tracking our behaviour and trying to influence what we do and buy. Some get it right and have us signing up for whatever service or product they are offering us. Others annoy us too much, don't seem trustworthy or get us at the wrong time and send us running. The really clever ones not only get us and impress us, but they keep us coming back for more - and even persuade us to bring our friends along for the ride.

How can your company be one of the clever ones without blowing its budget? According to BJ Fogg from California's Stanford University Persuasive Technology Lab, it can "take baby steps" with low-risk, frequent testing and then "pick up speed" as it goes along.

Fogg, along with other international guest speakers and co-organiser Christel De Maeyer from The Studios at Howest University College in West Flanders, will focus on techniques to test and influence user behaviour at the Design for Persuasion Conference in Ghent this month.

Fogg advises companies to "try something really small with little risk and get used to the idea of trying. The risks aren't expensive, but the benefits can be enormous. Learn what works in the process and, if all else fails, bring an expert like me in to help."

De Maeyer put together the first-ever Design for Persuasion conference last year in Brussels. It brought together more than 170 attendees from various sectors to network and find out about online persuasion and influence. Each presentation is a short and snappy 20 minutes.

"Many said it was an eye-opener," says De Maeyer. "It's a very international conference with ideas and people coming from all different perspectives - from psychological to sociological and from marketing to entrepreneurial."

De Maeyer arranged the conference through European Collaborative Innovation Centres (E-Clic), a project of the EU's Interreg programme, which helps Europe's regions form partnerships to work together on common projects. This year Fogg and his assistant will also do a workshop the day before the conference. They will introduce the "Behaviour Wizard" tool, which, according to Fogg, gives a very clear and systematic view of behaviour change and insights that you can apply to practical business goals.

Though most of the presenters are international, Pieter Wuyts is from very close by - the Ghent-based email optimisation company 8 Seconds, which is becoming a market leader in real-time testing. He will demon- strate how technology can help you improve your email campaigns.

"Everyone knows that they should be testing to increase performance, but most don't do it," says Wuyts. "We take away all of this trouble." He will introduce an easy- to-use tool so that clients can eventually do everything themselves to see what is effective. "Guessing doesn't work," says Wuyts. "Testing does."

Wim Soens from the Kortrijk-based internet company Indiegroup, will speak about Enterprise 2.0 - web 2.0 for business. According to Soens, innovative internal communities within big companies brought together by collaborative software are "really the next big thing". Think Facebook for companies. "Systems like Share-Point and intranet are linked to rigid and tight structures," he explains. "With persuasive design, the focus is on the people and not the process. You need to adapt the process to the person sitting in front of the computer."

Many will also say that mobile is really the next big thing. Fogg goes as far as to say that it's the next step in human evolution, with the technology being part of our bodies in that we will have mobile phones or smart devices with us at all times.

"It's hard to do things effectively on mobile," says Fogg, explaining that in terms of persuasion, mobile is still emerging, which means lots of companies will make mistakes as part of a learning curve. The Design for Persuasion Conference will give them a peek into some of those upcoming persuasive technologies and trends, as Fogg asserts: "If you don't keep up with those trends, you'll become irrelevant."

Design for Persuasion
30 September, 9.30-17.00
Marriott Ghent Drabstraat & Korenlei
www.designforpersuasion.com