Filed under: Marketing — Scott @ 2:55 pm
Barry Schwartz gave a very original talk at Google on how increased choice leads to a decreased user experience. The talk is relevent to internet marketers and web developers. Professor Schwartz research points out how and why people become less happy with increased options. He also points out how people act when they feel they have too many choices. The Professor then suggested several techniques that can help lead people to certain choices and why they worked.
Some of the techniques discussed:
- Bombarding the user with an overwhelming number of options then provide preselected solutions. The preselected solution could be high margin items or things that will make the user happier depending on your goals.
- Making default choices for a user that are in their best interest to increase the satisfaction of the user and benefit you.
- Acting as a intermediary for a user by making a decision of them. This can increase their satisfaction by removing the decisions from their hands and the regret of choosing the wrong thing.
The lecture is a little over an hour and its great with lots to digest. Make sure you watch it for yourself.
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I love that video. Well worth watching.
The decoy effect:
Give just a few options and use one as a decoy to get people to make a desired selection.
Two bottles of wine…
One is $15 and the other is $25.
Which bottle do most people choose? It will be about 50/50 because it’s apples & oranges.
Three bottles of wine…
One is $15, one is $25 and the third is $50.
Now which one would most people choose? They will likely choose the $25 bottle. (You don’t want to be cheap. The $25 bottle isn’t that much more expensive than the $15 bottle when compared to the price jump of the $50 bottle, etc, etc…
Packages:
You can bundle infinite choices into packages. All the packages have some junk mixed in with the treasure. You see this one a lot with cell phone calling plans, cable TV, travel and Desktop computers.
The price of individual items is obfuscated by packaging everything under a single price with no line items.
Again… You can bundle the infinite choices into just a few packages and then use one as a decoy to manipulate the desirability of the other packages.
[...] friend Scott has a great posting about manipulation techniques. Some of the stuff I heard before in a [...]
[...] How to influence user behaviour – Barry Schwartz ( no not SEO Barry ) gave an hour long lecture on how you can influence your users [...]