Every one of us has been to a soup isle in the grocery store at some point. Have you noticed the number of choices they have for sale? There are endless shelves stocked with soups from different companies in myriad variations. Just imagine having to make a decision on what soup to get – Campbell or Progresso, ready-to-eat or condensed, Mushroom or Minestrone, low salt minestrone or regular or high fiber and on and on. Is your head spinning yet?
Psychology professor Barry Schwartz makes good arguments in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why more is less on why you sell less when you provide customers too many choices. When customers cannot make up their minds on what to get they will simply just walk away without making any purchase.
That’s why it is important to help your customer make a choice easily and quickly. Just watch a customer trying to place an order at McDonald’s during lunch time. 8 times out of 10 he will simply order “Combo 3” rather than trying to order individual items. Fast food restaurants have made it easy for customers to order – they have to. After all, they can’t afford to have each customer take several minutes to order when there is a long line behind him during rush hour.
So how can you help customers make choice; which in turn helps you improve customer service and sales for your small business? There are several principles to keep in mind as described below.
- Keep a simple menu. This is perhaps the most important thing to remember. While many business owners believe in giving customers more choices; it becomes counter-productive beyond certain point. Having too many menu items not only makes it difficult for customer to make decision; but also it will increase your costs because of the need to stock more items, train your employees and so on.
- Devise a way to categorize choices. If you are selling fries make it small, medium or large. You can categorize items by color or number or some other way. The key is to make it simple for customer to understand and order.
- Group similar items. You can take the categorization one step further and group items that sell together. The McDonald’s order we mentioned earlier is a good example of how to do it. In McDonald’s case, most customers order some type of burger with fries and drink for lunch. Why not group them together and have customers order by number? Grouping items like this also helps improve your sales by making some customers order more items than they would otherwise.
- Show comparison of items. Showing how one item in a group is different from other helps customers decide fast. The best way to do this is by displaying a table showing side-by-side comparison between the items along various features.
- Make recommendations. Many customers have no idea what they should or want to get. Making recommendation helps them make the decision quickly and move on. You can find this in restaurants in the form of “Chef’s special” or at many retail stores in the form of “Today’s Special”.
One word of caution. Making menu simple doesn’t mean that you should not change your menu over time. The last thing you want is for customers to get tired of having the same items on your menu for years. You do want to introduce new products periodically; but do it in a manner that doesn’t add complexity in ordering and interfere with customers’ ability to make decision quickly and easily.
What do you think? How do you handle this at your business?
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