When a retail member asks me to put up a new slider, I like to follow up with the question, “Which current slider would you like me to take down?” I know, you’re trying to make things happen, and it seems like I’m going the wrong way. So I’d like to take this opportunity to let you know why. We like to set a limit of 4-5 sliders per website. Changing them often is great, but any more sliders and we just don’t think your customers will have the patience to look at more. I read this article that does a great job of explaining why less is more: Choice Paralysis: 3 Ways the Number of Choices Impacts Conversions It’s called “Choice Paralysis” and as a consumer, I can totally relate. It’s a situation where a customer can’t make a decision on a purchase because they are faced with so many choices that they end up paralyzed. I’m sure you’ve seen this; a customer who spends more than an hour in your store may be suffering. When a customer is looking at your website at home however, they aren’t trapped in a public place, so they “bounce”. In other words, they leave your site. Being the web geek that I am I wondered… “What if Google Analytics has something to do with the phrase ‘Let’s Bounce’?” Kind of eerie, huh? The bounce rate on your website is a good indicator of how your customers feel about the navigation and content on your website and if they’re interested. In the article, a marketing experiment from 2000 was explained.
“Back in 2000, psychologists Mark Lepper and Sheena Iyengar were involved in a study where two tables of jam were presented to grocery-store customers. One had 24 choices; people who sampled from this table got a $1-off coupon. The other table only had six choices, yet people ended up buying more from the table with fewer choices!”
We try to avoid friction when building a web page. Friction: Anything that upsets or frustrates a user’s easy path to the content they are interested in. Friction can be anything from an ugly website with a screaming color combo to a page five miles long that makes you scroll forever. Human behavior is big part of web design. If your website has a high bounce rate, think of it like a customer leaving empty handed.
