stenna
03-04-2009, 04:46 AM
Many of us labour under the impression that providing customers with a wide selection of products of a certain type increases customer satisfaction. After all, we think, if we provide them with 200 brands of peanut butter, they are more likely to find a brand that suits their taste. Schwatz cites surveys done in supermarkets that showed the reverse. When customers were presented with a huge selection of brands of a certain item, fewer customers bought the item than when fewer brands were displayed. The wide selection led to a paralysis of choice - the customers could not decide which brand to choose. As a result, they went away without choosing any.
Web Programming (link-stripped)companies also cited a study that showed that when presented with many choices, where making a choice required juggling many complex criteria, people often subconsciously simplified the criteria by focusing on one. The criterion they chose was often the wrong one.
When people have more choices, they expect more, because they expect that they will be able to choose the exact item that meets their needs perfectly. As a result, when more choices are given for a product, the chances of dissatisfaction with the product is higher. When no choice is offered, people either have no expectations or their expectations are lowered. I suspect they probably figured that since they had no choice but to get that particular item, it was unlikely to be perfect. They thus prepared themselves to accept a product that was merely "good enough".
If your site requires people to make decisions or choices, you might want to see if you can reduce the number of choices you offer. I don't think you need to remove all choice and decision-making from the equation though - offering a few choices may be useful, since your end-users are likely to have some differences in needs or taste. However, offering, say 30 varieties of a particular product may be an overkill for most products. The people visiting your site are not likely to want to spend half a day reading different 30 product descriptions to try to distinguish between them.
You should not make the removal of choices as a matter of policy though. Examine each of your products or services on a case-by-case basis. Remember that certain types of choices do not bewilder users. For example, if you are a commercial web host, you will probably offer several packages differentiated only in the amount of disk space and bandwidth they offer. The more expensive packages allow users to store more files and support heavier traffic. If the differences between packages is only a matter of scale, and this difference is clearly stated and easily understood by your users, the selection should not pose a great hindrance to them. Even in this case, though, you probably should not have too many packages on offer.
Web Programming (link-stripped)companies also cited a study that showed that when presented with many choices, where making a choice required juggling many complex criteria, people often subconsciously simplified the criteria by focusing on one. The criterion they chose was often the wrong one.
When people have more choices, they expect more, because they expect that they will be able to choose the exact item that meets their needs perfectly. As a result, when more choices are given for a product, the chances of dissatisfaction with the product is higher. When no choice is offered, people either have no expectations or their expectations are lowered. I suspect they probably figured that since they had no choice but to get that particular item, it was unlikely to be perfect. They thus prepared themselves to accept a product that was merely "good enough".
If your site requires people to make decisions or choices, you might want to see if you can reduce the number of choices you offer. I don't think you need to remove all choice and decision-making from the equation though - offering a few choices may be useful, since your end-users are likely to have some differences in needs or taste. However, offering, say 30 varieties of a particular product may be an overkill for most products. The people visiting your site are not likely to want to spend half a day reading different 30 product descriptions to try to distinguish between them.
You should not make the removal of choices as a matter of policy though. Examine each of your products or services on a case-by-case basis. Remember that certain types of choices do not bewilder users. For example, if you are a commercial web host, you will probably offer several packages differentiated only in the amount of disk space and bandwidth they offer. The more expensive packages allow users to store more files and support heavier traffic. If the differences between packages is only a matter of scale, and this difference is clearly stated and easily understood by your users, the selection should not pose a great hindrance to them. Even in this case, though, you probably should not have too many packages on offer.