Fewer Choices Lead to More Sales

"The evidence is overwhelming that presenting one option as a default increases the chance it will be chosen — a default eliminates the need to make a decision."
– Ned Welch, McKinsey & Company Consultant

Harness the power of the default option and fewer choices.

Do you like choices? Sure, we all do. What about too many choices? What happens when you’re faced with an annoying level of complexity in your purchase and you’d rather someone just told you which one to buy? It’s funny, I see this all of the time in coffee shops (where I work…when I’m not traveling, or in my office) when a ‘non-coffee-shop-person’ strolls up to the counter and tries to decide what to order. Seriously. Most coffee shop menus are more complicated than most restaurants. What if they had a default choice, or something that said "these are top 3 drinks that most people order…"?

The point here is to think about the default choices that people can make when purchasing your products or services (or donating to your cause). Do you make it easy for them? What is your default? Do you even have one?

This is one of several very approachable and easy to use behavioral marketing techniques that nearly any firm can employ. Even if you can’t make a ‘default option’ out of your offerings, reducing choice can lead to profitability as in the example of a grocery store offering the chance to taste a selection of 24 jams, while others were offered only 6. The greater variety drew more shoppers to sample the jams, but few made a purchase. By contrast, although fewer consumers stopped to taste the 6 jams on offer, sales from the group of 6 were more than five times higher than the group of 24.

Q&A | QUESTIONS & ACTIONS

What’s your default option? Do you have one? Can you make one, and make it easier for people to purchase?

Can you simplify your choices and improve your sales today?

WHERE ELSE TO LOOK?

A marketer’s guide to behavioral economics >> McKinsey Quarterly

When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? >> Journal of Personality and Social Psychology