The Jam Jar Spell

Early in my lending days, I showed a customer a wireframe for our website. It had everything they could possibly want to know. 😀

They were just confused. 🙁

Too much information up front, without structure, is like a pile of spaghetti: nobody can tell where one strand starts and another ends, and it’s too much to eat at once. What people need is a spoon, someone to sort it into spoonfuls they can take one at a time.

This week’s spell: more options draw people in, and fewer options help them decide. I call it the Jam Jar.

Last week’s Bottomless Bowl was about where people stop. This one is about whether they choose at all.

📜 The Lore: what the research says

1. The famous jam study

In 2000, psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper ran a jam tasting table at a California grocery store, with 24 jams on display some hours and 6 at others. The bigger display got more shoppers to stop (60% against 40%), but only 3% of them bought a jar, compared with 30% at the smaller one.

📖 Choice overload: past a certain point, more options make people less likely to choose, and less satisfied with what they pick.

2. When it happens, and when it doesn’t

The effect is less universal than the jam study suggests. A 2010 review of 50 experiments found no effect on average: sometimes more choice hurt, and sometimes it helped. A 2015 review of 99 results, led by Alexander Chernev, found that it shows up when:

• the options are complicated and hard to compare
• the decision is difficult, with high stakes or little time
• people don’t yet know what they want
• people want to get the decision over with

Most B2B software purchases meet all four.

3. Retirement plans

Iyengar and colleagues looked at 401(k) records for nearly 800,000 employees at 647 companies. When a plan offered 2 funds, 75% of employees enrolled; with 59 funds, about 60% did. Each additional 10 funds lowered enrollment by about 2 percentage points, and the people who put off deciding gave up their employer’s match while they waited.

4. B2B buying

Gartner’s 2019 research on B2B purchases found that buyers who received too much high-quality information, especially when it conflicted, were 153% more likely to settle for a smaller purchase than they had planned. More case studies and more demos don’t always move a deal forward.

Why it happens: with good intentions, we give people as much choice as possible, but the brain wasn’t designed to process that much at once, and a blank slate takes effort to evaluate. Too much information has the same effect as too many choices: confusion, and sometimes exhaustion.

✨ Practical Magic: try this at work

Marketers: a full range, with one clear recommendation

The 24-jam display drew more people in, and a full range can do the same on a product or pricing page. What helps people decide is a recommended option (“Most teams start here”), with the rest grouped by team size, budget or goal.

Grouping helps even when the groups mean nothing. In a 2008 study, coffee drinkers choosing from a menu sorted into “A,” “B” and “C” were as satisfied as those whose menu said “Mild,” “Dark Roast” and “Nutty.” Newcomers benefited most.

Marketers and product teams: the order of information

A landing page works best when information arrives in the order people need it, rather than all at once. The same goes for the header menu, where every extra link is another place for a visitor to get lost.

Sales: what matters, and what doesn’t

Gartner calls this “sensemaking”: helping buyers judge which information matters for their decision. In practice, it can mean telling a buyer the three things that should drive the choice, and which parts of the deck they can set aside. In other words, be the spoon.

Leaders: a template instead of a blank page

Too much freedom leaves people unsure where to start, and a template gives them direction. Filling in the first section yourself shows what you have in mind. We covered this in the Head Start Spell, and if you missed that issue, you can read it here.

When you go to your manager, bring a few recommendations rather than a request for “HELP.”

☠️ Curse Collection: where it backfires

The obvious conclusion is to cut options everywhere. The research doesn’t support that: the 2010 review found that fewer options often made no difference, and the larger jam display was the one that drew people in.

People who know exactly what they want often like range, and a short list can suggest you don’t carry what they need. Cutting to a single option has its own problem: in a negotiation, people choose between two or three options, but argue with one.

The counter-spell:

• Keep the full range where people browse, and narrow it to two or three where they decide.
• Ask what people are looking for first, then show the options that fit.
• Find the step where people drop off, using your analytics or your sales team, and reduce the choices there.

💬 Your turn

Thank you to my returning champs, Kishore, Geoffrey and Reid!

• Kishore: Small details in a form or workflow can signal progress or make people think they are finished.
• Geoffrey: Test the flow with someone outside the team, and give meetings clear agendas, decision-makers and time for next steps.
• Reid: Make the next step obvious as well as easy, so customers do not mistake it for the finish line.

Where do too many choices slow decisions down in your work? Tell me in the comments, and I’ll share my favorites in the next issue.

Read and comment on LinkedIn

🪄 Meanwhile, at the wand shop

For the autumn sale, the shop laid all 400 wands out on the counter. Customers browsed for hours and left empty-handed.

The next week, Kevin’s cousin Devin got his own shelf and a little sign: “Staff pick.” Devin sold in an hour. Kevin is taking full credit.

Until next time, may your menus be short and your decisions easy.

Claire, sometimes wizard