We often assume that when we offer our customers a plethora of choice, that they’ll be more likely to purchase from us. While more choice can mean more freedom, it can also mean that the more choices we’re presented with, the less happy we are with the one we make!
When it comes to your conversion rate optimization, less is more really does work. With fewer distractions and less choice come higher conversion rates, an increase in leads and more money for your business.
So, how can you improve your conversion rates?
Limit the choices
The first and easiest solution is to limit the choices for your consumer. The ever-popular jam study, conducted by Professor Sheena Lyenger is often brought up in this subject.
In a high-end grocery store, researchers offered shoppers with two alternating sampling stations – one showcasing 24 flavours of jam and one featuring six options.
Interestingly, when 24 flavours of jam were available, only 3% of those who tasted the samples went on to purchase the jam. However, when there were only six options available, 30% purchased at least one jar of jam.
This study leads us to believe that people become overwhelmed by too many choices, which leads to something called Action or Choice Paralysis.
Push for a fast decision
The faster someone can make a decision, the less likely they are to suffer from action or choice paralysis and walk away feeling happy about their purchase. This is why we want our consumers to make their decision in a timely manner.
One way of doing this is by offering a great returns policy – this will allow the consumer to feel confident in making a purchase, knowing that they can return it if they need to for some reason. Low costs and stand out products also make it easier for consumers to make a decision.
Make the process easier
There is nothing worse than going on to a website and being overly confused by the abundance of choices on one particular product. Sometimes it all gets too hard and has you clicking out, leaving the purchase “for another day”.
A good way to combat this issue is to break down the choices into more manageable sized chunks. A group of smaller, defined decisions can make it easier for a consumer to process and not feel overwhelmed over the purchasing process.
Remember, when creating these choices, keep in mind we still want to make the overall purchase process as fast as possible to ensure you find a good balance between creating easy to manage choices and encouraging a fast sale.
Make the options unique
As well as only providing a limited amount of options, you also need to ensure that those options are distinct so that consumers aren’t stuck with finding the differences between each item.
The more similarities between the options, then the harder the decision is for your consumers. Go over your product listings and ensure that you can find distinct differences between each product. If you can’t, then how do you expect your consumers to
Making these changes obviously doesn’t guarantee that you’ll instantly have millions of customers, it takes a lot of hard work on both your social channels and website to increase your sales.
It does, however, mean that you can greatly increase your conversion rate by implementing these changes. As with anything you do, take the time to look at your stats.
By looking at your analytics, you can see which pages have the highest exit rate and then make changes to limit the choices on these pages and improve the overall purchasing process.