“Oh I don’t know now! I like this one, but I also like that one too.
“And that one sounds tasty; I’d like to try that. That’s my favourite one… but I can have that at anytime, this one is new and could be nice.
“But what if I don’t like it? I’ve wasted my money and missed out on enjoying my favourite. I just don’t know what to do now… I’ll give it a miss this time.”
I remember reading about a little experiment which was performed at a small local fair – or farmers market – with a stall selling jams and pickles.
The experiment was to compare how people behaved when they were subjected to a stall where they had a lot of choice in products and when they were given just a basic choice of products.
They started with a stall which was stocked with a huge range of different flavoured jams and pickles then they removed many flavours and offered only a limited selection.
What they found was that the stall with less choice of flavoured jams and pickles sold more.
It appeared that when given a lot of choice, buyers struggled to make a decision and instead they simply gave up.
Which is what the start of this article was all about… confusion and indecision born from having too much choice.
It’s known as ‘choice overwhelm’, also called ‘decision overwhelm’.
In the experiment buyers decided that it was easier to walk away empty handed than make a buying decision.
Having a stall which has over fifty different varieties and flavours of a product might seem like a great idea, you could say that there is a ‘flavour for everyone’ but having too much choice creates confusion and leads to indecision.
A lot of people simply struggle to make a decision when there is too much choice.
When there is a small range of products to choose from, it makes it easier for the buyer to make a decision.
Choice overwhelm happens a lot when you are faced with a lot of new unknowns.
Take Netflix for example; as you may know, Andi, our techy guy, and his good lady love to settle down most evenings to watch a thrilling drama, but… if they do not already have an idea of what they want to watch… trawling through Netflix’s library of films and programmes always results with Netflix being closed down and both of them muttering the words “I don’t know what to put on.”
It is the same when trawling through websites like Amazon Kindle or Audible when looking for a book to read or listen to.
There is just too much choice.
Categories help to organise and differentiate between products, but even then, they are crammed to the brim with too many similar items to choose between.
When there are too many products to pick from, you develop a kind of ‘snow blindness’ and fail to clearly see half of what is available.
It’s a bit like trying to pick out one person calling your name in a crowd of several hundred football fans all shouting at the top of their lungs… it’s virtually impossible.
The description and photo – called the thumbnail – of each item helps them to stand out against the rest.
Imagine one company using the same logo and packaging on a variety of jams, marmalades and pickles but only the flavour is different… you are likely to ‘not see’ many of them.
On sites like Amazon and Netflix, it is a constant battle to get your attention… which is why it is vital to do separate external advertising and marketing.
You cannot simply rely on people going to your website, sites like Amazon or your stall to choose an item if you have stacks and stacks of similar albeit slightly different products.
There is too much choice and it causes ‘decision overwhelm’.
Going back to the stall at the fair selling a large variety of jams and pickles that was losing money due to ‘choice overwhelm’… there is a workaround.
The solution would be to have multiple stalls selling a smaller selection of products under different names and branding.
As an example; there could be a stall selling ‘Traditional Jams & Marmalades’, a stall selling ‘Exotic & Spicy Jams & Marmalades’, a stall selling ‘Traditional Pickles’, and a stall selling ‘Exotic & Spicy Pickles’.
They may be similar, but they are also quite niche specific and target a specific set of people who automatically have an idea of what the stall is about because of how they have been set up.
Each stall will have a smaller choice of products which is easier to peruse than one stall trying to sell a whole load of jams, marmalades and pickles.
Having more than one stall will mean increased costs for hiring the stalls, but if it helps to prevent loss of sales from ‘decision overwhelm’, it may work out cheaper.
This works well for online niche marketers who make money selling specific products via websites.
They don’t have one website which sells anything and everything; they generally have multiple websites which each focus on one specific niche and/or product.
A website selling specialised yoga equipment would not be selling ice hockey equipment. An ice hockey equipment website is unlikely to sell yoga equipment.
Yet both websites can be owned by the same person.
Yes, some companies like Amazon do sell anything and everything, but Amazon started out selling books and then expanded to incorporate other products… but they also focused heavily on external promotions and ‘grouping’ products together effectively creating a whole load of internal ‘stalls’ within Amazon.
They also developed smart algorithms which groups relevant products together which they show to potential customers as ‘buyers who bought [said item] also bought these…’
If Amazon was a pickle stall at a local fair they would show people who bought a jar of pickle products such as bread, cheese and ham.
A stall selling jams and marmalade would probably sell more if they removed pickles and added a couple of styles of home baked crusty loaves.
The pickle stall would also benefit from cross promoting a couple of different styles of cheese, ham and several styles of home baked crusty bread instead of jam and marmalade.
They may increase the amount of products they sell, but they are still only selling a handful of different pickles and the other products are super relevant to the main product.
Even though there are more things to buy, there is still only a small amount of choice.
People are more likely to spread pickle on bread and cheese than mix it with jam or marmalade.
The change in size and shape of products for sale helps to focus the attention and helps buyers to make a decision.
Having ten same-sized jars of each of the fifty different flavours of jam, marmalade and pickle would mean a buyer seeing a wall of 500 jars which all look the same.
At least with only fifty jars of pickle, twenty packs of cheese and ten loaves of bread, you can easily differentiate between each product and feel less overwhelmed when it comes to making a decision.
So when it comes to starting a business and developing products to sell, less is often more… or should I say… less is best.
Instead of creating hundreds of versions of the same few items, create just a handful and maybe instead create other relevant products which compliment the main product.
If you want to make hundreds of versions of the same few items, brand and promote them differently using different stalls, websites or different size jars and packaging…
Otherwise you run the risk of losing money due to giving people too much choice that they are too overwhelmed to make a decision.
It’s for that reason many people create individual systems to sell their digital products from instead of listing them in a large product menu similar to that of the overstocked stall selling hundreds of different flavoured jams, marmalades and pickles.
Online product menus as seen on many websites do the same thing as the overstocked stall… they give too much choice which leads to indecision and eventually buyers abandon the website and don’t buy anything.
These individual systems are fully automated passive income systems. They sell on autopilot once they are fully set up. You only need to show them to people every now and then.
Creating digital products and setting up fully automated passive income systems from which you can sell digital products, is a lot easier than you may think.
To find out for yourself go to:
www.The30DayTo30KChallenge.com
Kind Regards
John Harrison
PS… People can buy digital products from your fully automated passive income systems at any time of the day. You do not need to do anything other than add more digital products to your system.
There is no ‘manning’ the stall or stalls, these systems do all the work for you.
Here’s that link again: