It’s important to understand that all decisions involve emotions. In this article, Susan Weinschenk explains how you can make your users feel confident of their decisions and why it’s a bad idea to provide more than four options to choose from.

MOST DECISIONS ARE NOT MADE “LOGICALLY”

MOST OF OUR DECISIONS ARE MADE UNCONSCIOUSLY

Do you write your messaging and content to appeal to logical thinking?

Be suspicious of what people say.

People need to feel in order to decide.

People buy when they feel confident of their decision.

DON’T CONFUSE UNCONSCIOUS WITH IRRATIONAL OR BAD

ONLY GIVE MORE INFORMATION IF PEOPLE ARE MAKING A GOAL-BASED DECISION

TOO MANY CHOICES MEANS PEOPLE WON’T CHOOSE

“You may have heard the idea that people can only remember, or deal with 7 plus or minus 2 things at a time (5 to 9). This actually is not true. It was a theory first mentioned by Miller in 1956 at a talk he gave at the American Psychological Association meeting. But research since then shows that 7 +- 2 is a myth. The real number is 3-4 not 5-9. Refuting research includes:

• “The Magical Number 4 In Short-Term Memory: A Reconsideration Of Mental Storage Capacity,” Nelson Cowan, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2001)
• “The Magical Number Seven: Still Magic After All These Years?,” Alan Baddeley, Psychological Review (1994)
• “The Magic Number Seven After Fifteen Years,” Donald Broadbent, Wiley (1975)

And most recently, Sheena Iyengar (author of “The Art Of Choosing”), has conducted several studies that clearly show that if you give people too many choices then they end up not choosing anything at all.

People liked having more choices to choose from but they were more satisfied with their choice when there was less to choose from.”

Stephen