Which one do I want?
The most difficult thing for designers and website owners is removing elements from a website.
What we all think is that getting everything on every page will cover all the angles. We feel that if we get everything we can think about on the page that we’ve removed the chance for losing a visitor’s interest.
It turns out that the exact opposite is true.
From Speed Dating Decision Making – Why Less Is More:
Yet new research does point out a different dating problem: being confronted with a large number of choices can make it harder to make a good decision. In fact, it can even prevent you from a making a decision in the first place.
For most people there is confusion associated with too many choices. The article highlights research showing an experiment of people trying to pick a candy bar at the store. When there were too many choices people became confused and didn’t make a choice when there were too many options. People that had few options chose more often and were more happy with their selection.
So what does this mean for your website?
Limit Options on Every Page
Don’t confuse the visitors to your site with too many options. If people come to your site there is a good chance that they are pretty close to making a decision to purchase. The visitor might know that they want something to fix their problem or to entertain them. They might simply be undecided about what specifically to choose.
It’s like going to the candy store and seeing tons of options. A person knows they want candy, but when there are too many options in one area they can’t decide what they should purchase.
If someone visits your homepage you should limit the options they have for calls to action. Figure out what the best possible outcome for the next step will be from your homepage. Focus on giving only one option for the visitor. You can use secondary options but limit their appeal. You can kind of hide them in the background. This way is your first option is not ideal for the visitor they can still find something else if they look around.
Every Page Should Have a Goal
Every website should have a goal and every page on the website should have a goal. If the goal of your services page is to get visitors to contact you so you can sell them on the service then that is the top priority for the page.
We just learned that people are confused and might just leave if presented with too many options. Focus on the top service you offer and let people make a simple decision. You can use one, two or maybe three options, but any more than that and you might be turning people away from your services page instead of getting them to take the intended action.
Fight the Natural Tendencies
Limiting options is hard work. For some reason we want to give many options so we can please everyone. In almost every case, though, the best thing to do is to limit your focus. Consider your ideal customer and what they want to accomplish on your website. Focus on their needs and the one or maybe two things they would want to choose.
Instead of getting many visitors and a few conversions you’ll get maybe fewer visitors, but many more conversions because you won’t be confusing people.
Focus on this as you work with your designer on your new website design.
Image Credit: C. G. P. Grey
