

Customers given too many choices are 10x less likely to buy - sivers
http://sivers.org/jam

======
patio11
Here's an anecdote for you: I am generally religious about reducing the length
of funnels, because length kills conversion like nothing else. This lead me to
once let the customers make two choices with one click: whether they wanted
download or CD of the software, and whether they wanted to pay by Paypal or
Google Checkout. The four combinations were laid out in a 2x2 table.

This proved _immensely_ confusing for people, so much so that adding a
shopping cart on top of two bare "download" or "CD" buttons caused sales to
rise substantially, despite the fact that the shopping cart was a virtual riot
of distraction and required minimally an extra click to get through.

~~~
Goladus
Why the table? I can imagine being confused by something like that. I'd
attempt a solution like this before using a table.

    
    
        Order a CD:
              [Google Checkout]
              [Paypal]
        Purchase a download:
              [Google Checkout]
              [Paypal]
    

That way, I still make the decisions in order but only click one link. The
tree could be inverted and still work, but this way the label on the links
match exactly where you are going.

------
anuraggoel
This sounds reasonable. But I've always wondered about Amazon.com's UI
strategy in the context of choice - they always show me much more crap than I
am interested in: on the home page, on search result pages, on product detail
pages, pretty much everywhere on their site. Right now I can see well over 30
'recommended' items on their homepage (and this is _after_ the huge Kindle
ad). Surely they've conducted A/B tests. Why don't they see the same results?

~~~
vaksel
thats not choice though, that's pretty much Amazon's equivalent of a product
aisle.

~~~
anuraggoel
Fair point, but isn't the jam example also a product aisle with 24 varieties
of jam? My current frontpage recommendations include around 15 laptops and 15
books - I can't possibly buy all of them - aren't they asking me to choose? If
they showed me just three from each product category, and fewer categories
overall, I might actually be interested in the recommendations.

~~~
greendestiny
I guess its something to do with the ability make a decision and short term
memory. Interchangable products makes decision making hard because they need
to be considered at once. Products in other categories don't need to be held
in your head while you choose between them.

------
jeroen
Barry Schwartz on how more choice makes people less satisfied:
[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_par...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html)

~~~
jwecker
I think it may have been in this talk, but the solution when the customers
actually demand the multiple choices is to do the best of both worlds- the
"Greek Restaurant" - Have a menu filled with just about every dish imaginable,
but then have a page in front in large print that says something like
"Recommended Choices" and put the highest margin items on there. The customer
feels like they _could_ choose something if they were in the mood, but they
can feel good about simply ordering one of the suggested choices.

------
tybris
24 different types of jams is too much. 24 different types of books is too
little.

~~~
tortilla
24 different types of books on beginning HTML is still to much.

------
thorax
Cool-- I had a hunch recently that some of our weekly match reports for
Yumbunny (our dating site) were showing too many potential matches in the
email reports we send. I envisioned some of our users getting overwhelmed by
all the options.

Anyway, this article reminded me to get that rolling so instead of top 10,
we're going to try top 3 and see if engagement increases. We'll see.

~~~
fallentimes
You really should test that and submit your findings to HN :).

~~~
dflock
Yes - sounds like an excellent candidate for an A/B split test and an
enlightening follow-up post on HN!

------
callmeed
Related anecdote: with our core product, customers choose a base website
design/template (Flash-based) and then customize it with our cms. At one time
we had around 25 designs to choose from. Some designs we thought were really
slick hardly sold at all.

Recently we trimmed it down to just our best designs. Currently we are
offering 9 to choose from. It hasn't been long enough to back up the article
but sales are definitely stronger and there seems to be a more even
distribution of chosen designs.

------
nazgulnarsil
the profession of salesperson exists because people want their choices
narrowed for them.

~~~
mlLK
I was about to say something along those similar lines. . .since most
customers have a hard-time rationalizing a set of choices without
understanding the makeup of each choice. Most customers, in a sense, out-
source the decision-making to either a salesman's pitch or a product's brand.
Seems like most of marketing's job is to optimize their product according to
their customer's profile, which, in short, I think means each product
marginalizes their customer according to a set of values called culture.

------
staunch
Not really the same thing, but makes me think of a behavior I've noticed in
myself. Sometimes I'll decide to buy an item or two, and then browse around
some more. Pretty soon my shopping cart is filled with stuff I want, but now
instead of some minor spending I'm faced with a more significant purchase. I
often decide to buy absolutely nothing.

If the store could encourage me to just purchase the one or two things I
originally wanted they'd make more money off me.

~~~
sp332
Sounds like you should be using the "wishlist" instead of the shopping cart.

------
dpcan
I think he missed a big point. Lead them in with features, like they are bait,
THEN only present 3 packages to buy (instead of 16). Software is different
than jelly.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Article dating back to eight years ago:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/health/in-weird-math-of-
ch...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/09/health/in-weird-math-of-
choices-6-choices-can-beat-600.html?pagewanted=all)

------
timdellinger
A neologism from Douglas Coupland's 1991 book Generation X:

Option Paralysis: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.

------
vaksel
it seems that for most people, 5 is the most choices they can consider without
getting a headache.

I think optimally you want the person to narrow it down to 3 choices, because
at that point the person is a lot more likely to buy, since they are at a
point where they can consider the items side by side and actually make up
their mind.

------
known
Couple of years back I read that Google Home Page was designed in such way
that it should not display more than 7 features.

------
Confusion
_Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to
get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed
who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own
treatment.

So, if you ask your customers if they want extensive choice, they will say
they do – but they really don’t. _

That's a huge _non sequitur_. Research on cancer treatment preference does not
imply anything about 'amount of choice' preference. Not even when combined
with research on 'number of sales' as dependent on 'amount of choice', because
in that case no one was asked how much choice they preferred.

~~~
randallsquared
Maybe people who prefer fewer choices are much more likely to get cancer. ;)

------
blue1
see the book "the paradox of choice" by barry schwartz. interesting read

