Last week, someone pointed me to a clever mind trick that’s worth testing. On Marketingfacts, Bart Schultz wrote about a technique called the Hobson’s +1 Choice Effect. So what is Hobson’s Choice? It’s the choice between taking a single option or leaving it. When you’re buying a product, for example, the choice is simply to buy it or not. Studies suggest that when consumers face lots of options, they often walk away because there’s too much to choose from.
Hobson’s Choice +1:
The hypothesis is that the subconscious, emotional part of the brain often wants your product, while the conscious part makes more rational decisions about whether or not to spend money on it. With just one option, these conscious, rational processes still have plenty of mental energy left to keep those emotional impulses in check.But when you add an extra option (Hobson’s+1 choice), such as ‘buy product X’ or ‘share this on Facebook’, the brain uses both processes to make that decision too. And the conscious, rational part of our brain in particular runs out of mental energy very quickly.
So by getting someone to think consciously and rationally about sharing on Facebook, you wear down their rational thinking a little (of course, almost everyone on an online store’s product page chooses ‘no, don’t share on Facebook’). As a result, there’s less rational resistance when the next decision comes along: buy or don’t buy. The brain’s grip on its ‘greedy’ emotional side has loosened, and your conversion rate goes up.
http://www.marketingfacts.nl/berichten/conversieknaller-de-extra-link-die-niemand-klikt-hobson1-effect
Do we really base our decisions on a misleading second link next to a button? Does a second option always have more influence on what we end up choosing?
Either way, Schultz shares a few tips for persuading people online:
- Don’t offer just one call to action. Add a second option below it (move a link from elsewhere on the page, or create a new one if you have to, such as social sharing buttons or browser features).
- Make sure the extra option either leads to (almost) the same outcome (a trivial choice) or is unappealing (aversive conceptual contrast).
- But whatever you do, don’t use any of this if you want your prospects to make a conscious, rational choice.
Say you want to showcase your most popular shoe on your website. Would placing the least popular shoe next to it lead to more conversions? Is that misleading the customer, or does it actually damage your credibility? And will it always come down to the small details, like a little addition next to the order button?
There’s also the question of how much it chips away at the online store’s authority. At some point, say when a visitor comes back, won’t an added (less interesting) option start to feel misleading?
It reminded my colleague of a video he’d seen years ago as a student: an old clip of Dan Ariely (it’s only a minute long, so give it a look) about pricing for The Economist. In his example, The Economist offers three options: a cheap one, an expensive one, and one at the same price that gets you a 2-for-1 deal. His test group compared all three, and the 2-for-1 deal looked like the clear winner. He then ran the test with just the first and second options, and the group overwhelmingly picked the cheapest deal, because the contrast between the two remaining options was too big.
Plenty to think about, and maybe reason enough to give it a try. You could test the text next to your button, or let visitors compare three products on your homepage. A/B test, anyone?
