I am sometimes guilty of offering too many choices.

I can see that in most situations, more than one choice is unnecessary.

Some situations require more than once choice, such as when offering services. As others have mentioned, this can also be useful for price anchoring - having a premium, expensive option makes the "middle / adequate" option seem like a much better deal.

But even in situations that call for more than one choice, they can usually be reduced to as few choices as are necessary.

Back in the day, we sold Shaved Ice in the summer at County Fairs. We started out with 25 flavors. Can you imagine how long it took customers to decide what to order? Especially when we let them have up to 3 flavors at a time. Lines got long; people got tired of waiting and would leave.

We eventually ended up with 3 flavors... and we made it as simple as possible: RED, BLUE and YELLOW. (Not, "Cherry, Blue Coconut, and Lemon.") Guess what? No complaints. Much faster service. Happy customers, less hassle, more profit.

I don't think we could have successfully offered just 1 flavor, but cutting it down from 25 to just a necessary 3 made a world of difference to our success.

OMIT NEEDLESS CHOICES. (Hat-tip to Strunk & White).

Thanks for the reminder, Robert!

I don't mind recurring payments if they are really small, like the $5 I pay monthly for a huge pile of material to sell at the Dreamtean Gold Club site. But I think upsells are are most often a decidedly crooked way to market. There is no indication, except sometimes, that the adulated program is limited. Then you get hit with an even bigger fee to actually get the real program on an oto page that says this is a deal.

Because I looked at the price on the front and looked at my card and I estimated that I could just handle that, I get downright furious when I find out I can't handle more and I am being railroaded. With me oto pages and upsells are really out. I think they are unfair. This does not give me a choice but to forget about the item.

I have been ignoring your programs because I have a couple of good ones but I am already too swamped with other programs that are supposed to help me sell those two good programs I have. Nothing is working too well..... yet. and I am not buying any more.

Robert, I have not unsubscribed because I like your blogposts. If they don't hit me over the head they make me smile. I need that.

Thanks,
Annette
P.S. I unticked the webinar thing. I cannot get webinars to load. Got stuttering sound, no mic. Even if you had just a conference number to call into, I could not do it on the 8th. Got another appointment.

This is a big area which alot of people mention in their courses, but there's nothing that I know of right now that goes into any serious nerdy detail in this area and gives suggestions for improvement.

I've heard all the stuff about changing the headline, the colours, the copy, one word at a time etc, and I use Google analytics on one or two sites, but really don't have a good, clear roadmap or step by step process on how to track, test, monitor changes.

Thanks.

Here is a question pertinent to this topic. When you have multiple options for payment, or multiple offers, how do you do this? Do you give them a choice on the sales page? Or do each option or offer on a different sales page and split test them? (Or both?) -- Sorry, I couldn't resist adding that last one.

Also just want to comment that giving a long list of things that are "possible" to do is different than explaining what an actual process is. In other words, if there are 21 steps in learning how to make a video (I'm making this up, but it's a good example) -- then you really do need to identify everything that must happen in order for the process to work.

I think you mean not offering a list of potential paths for an outcome, rather than critical steps. Is this right?

One thing that seems important is to know which part of the puzzle you're working on. What you do on a squeeze page is not the same thing you do on a sales page, and it's still different again for an informational web page. What works on one will not work on another.

Oh and one final thought. When I think of all the variables that *could* be tested, it feels overwhelming. And it can literally take forever to test every single element, since you can only change one thing at a time. How do you pick which elements to test? Do you have to test every single one? And how do you pick the order in which to test them?

I'll be very interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Thanks again for a very useful thread.

Nancy

It's your firmness of voice that cuts through all the indiciveness. That firmness grabs people's attention and they listen for awhile just because they like the comfort of being directed. As long as you give good directions, are intelligent without being tedious and provide some comic relief, all is good. You've got it going on, which means you don't have to do the trendy stuff. In fact you can sit on the sidelines and snipe at the trendy stuff. We all get a kick out of that.

Todd

My motto is "believe in your own b.s. act at your own peril"
Use the free tools either A/B or multivariate but always be testing

Thanks,

Dave.

Great post as always and I think you are spot on with this. This is the biggest problem with Internet Marketing and why so many people fail is the sheer amount of choice.

There are many different ways to make money online with the people who are using each method busy extolling the virtues of it whilst selling products.

This means the new marketer comes in and is faced with a wealth of distraction - all of which works but because there is so much they lose focus, jump from technique to technique and end up doing nothing.

You've hit the nail on the head with this one

Jason