“More is Better”, right? Well, apparently not when it comes to making a buying decision.
In fact, research shows that you are actually more likely to convert less by giving your prospects more options to deal with.
This is true if your selling physical products, virtual info products, asking visitors to fill out a web form, or anywhere you want someone to make a decision.
When presented with many options, it’s often much easier to do nothing.
How to Increase Your Online Conversions: Reducing Your Options Leads to More Sales
The New York Times ran an experiment to test this theory at a grocery store by setting up a booth on two different Saturdays.
On the first Saturday they set out free samples of 24 different flavors of jam. 60% percent of those walking by stopped to get a free sample. 3% of those that stopped purchased some jam.
On the second Saturday they only set out 6 flavors of jam. The result was that only 40% of those walking by stopped to get a free sample. Was this a bust?
Not at all! Of those that stopped for a free sample on the second Saturday…30% bought a jam!
That was a 600% increase in conversions. The smaller set of options outsold the larger set by a huge margin!
Why Do Less Options Lead to More Sales?
Less options lead to more sales conversions because people don’t want to think. That’s true! We want to be able to make a quick decision, choose and go, because thinking is just too taxing.
Don’t make your website visitors experience “information overload”. Make it simple for them to find what they want and quickly make their way to the checkout.
If you sell physical products don’t display your entire inventory. Learn from companies like Amazon that will only display 6 related items when customers are looking at a product. Sure Amazon has thousands of products they can recommend…but they keep it simple. Surely they know what they’re doing, right?
If you sell a service, can you keep your subscription choices to 3, or at most 5, options? Don’t pull out all 30 different price points.
The same is true when it comes to web forms as well. The more information you require from your visitors, the less people will fill out a form on your site.
Instead of asking for name, email, phone, address, sex, social security, blood type, favorite movie, weight, and most embarrassing moment……can you keep the required information to a minimum?
Research shows that you can gain a 25% conversion rate by requiring, at most, only 3 fields in your contact forms.
Bottom Line
Now I’m not telling you that you have to eliminate your entire inventory or that you have to completely rethink the way that you do business.
However, I am saying that if you’re conversion percentages are not where you would like for them to be then you might need to tweak your offers.
Give your website visitors a few options to choose from and test. Tweak your options a bit and test some more. Keep on tweaking and testing.
But, whatever you do, keep it simple, keep it direct, and your conversions will definitely improve.
What do you think? Have you had any success by reducing the number of offers for your product or service? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.