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Why you should stop giving your customers too many choices

Why you should stop giving your customers too many choices

too many choicesI learned an interesting statistic this morning, there are more than 18,000 redbox kiosks and new kiosks are currently being installed at a rate of one per hour! My first reaction was "wow, we're in the wrong business!". But, I am of the school of thought that there are lesson to learn from every business. The case study that I read, essentially concluded that no matter what product, or even service, we are offering - we need to give our customers (residents) less choices.

As product managers, we have somehow convinced ourselves that our customers both want and need more choices when it comes to our products. This thinking has allowed us to heap on more and more choices for our customers to make: colors, pricing plans, features, etc. However, it just may be the case that the one thing that our customers really don't want is to have to make more decisions in order to buy our products.

So, here's my question for you – how many choices do your prospects have in the decision making process? How many floorplans are there to chose from? How many pages on your website give choices other than lease an apartment with us?

One of our policies is that every website we build must provide access to decision making information (i.e. physical address, contact info, rental application, etc) with 3 clicks or less. From the home page of a website, a prospect should not have to click more than 3 pages "deep" to have vital information. We see far too many apartment websites that require home > floorplans > floorplan B > options > rent online. The more times someone has to click, the higher the chance they'll leave your site without making a decision.


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Elysa Rice is Ellipse Communication's Emerging Media Consultant. Ellipse is celebrating 10 years providing websites and software to the multifamily industry.

 
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I think you're right! Too many choices can definitely become an obstacle to leasing - or anything else. Just think how much more comfortable/easy it is when you've been invited to dinner and your host/hostess tells you where you are sitting instead of everyone standing around the table waiting for someone to make the first move. It can be paralyzing!

  Jen Piccotti
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I'm really challenged with our current lease-up property http://www.homeisthelegacy.com.

While it is one of the most unique properties I've ever seen and it is really exciting to see it being built, 29 different floor plans is insane.

I agree, simplify, simplify, simplify. Our customers already have so many choices like what to have for breakfast, or if they should wait to get gas at the next station so they can save 2 cents/gallon. We don't need to make their lives any more difficult. We're trying to cram way too much info on our websites and that is a challenge.

At J.C. Hart we're actually building separate sites for residents so that we can simplify the "brochure" sites as I call them. We're hoping this can help streamline the online experience for both residents and prospects.

  Mark Juleen
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Jen- I think paralyzing is a great word to describe what happens when there are too many options.

Mark- while I like the idea of separate for existing residents and the "brochure" for prospects, why separate them completely. Two websites isn't as powerful for google juice (that's my official term for it) as perhaps another section.

  Elysa Rice
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I really like that "3-clicks" concept. I've visited way too many websites where contact information or office location is hidden or otherwise buried, as though the company doesn't really want you to have that information ... it's a huge turn-off to what might otherwise be a wonderful experience.

  Sara Morrill
This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site

Elysa- Not separate URLs, just separate subdomains with different purposes.

  Mark Juleen

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