Enterprise Search and Choice
June 22, 2009
I participated in a teleconference last week during which the following comment was made: “We bought the Google Search Appliance because it did offer us too many choices.” I found a link to a short article by Derek Sivers that shed some light on this comment. “Customers Given Too Many Choices Are 10X Less Likely to Buy” puts some weight behind the injunction, “Keep it simple, stupid” or KISS. Mr. Sivers cites a university professor and reported: about a customer behavior test. You can get the details from Mr. Sivers’ write up. The key points were, in my opinion:
Lessons learned: [1] Having many choices seems appealing (40% vs 60% stopped to taste) [2] Having many choices makes them 10 times less likely to buy (30% vs 3% actually bought). Surgeon Atul Gawande found that 65% of people surveyed said if they were to get cancer, they’d want to choose their own treatment. Among people surveyed who really do have cancer, only 12% of patients want to choose their own treatment.
What’s the lesson for search marketers? Don’t make the pitch too complex due to the many choices the system presents to the user. There’s downside to the KISS approach. The teleconference was about replacing a search appliance with a more sophisticated system that offered more choice to the administrator. Go figure.
Stephen Arnold, June 22, 2009
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You might find this pair of blog posts by Jeremy Pickens interesting:
http://irgupf.com/2009/05/15/google-search-options-and-the-paradox-of-choice/
http://irgupf.com/2009/03/04/ranked-lists-and-the-paradox-of-choice/