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I experienced something similar. We had a website with several products that seemed fairly similar, so we were concerned that people might have trouble deciding

by raylad 2y ago

I experienced something similar. We had a website with several products that seemed fairly similar, so we were concerned that people might have trouble deciding which one to get, and not buy as a result. So we made a product advisor applet where the user would answer a few questions and it would suggest one or two products that would be best for them. Getting the applet right took a bit of work, but once it was done it worked very well. We put it live on the site and.... conversions dropped precipitously. We A/B tested it and yep, it definitely hurt conversions. I still don't know why it hurt conversions, but it did. So we moved it from the homepage to a FAQ section of the site, and hardly anyone ever used it at all.

lathiat 2y ago
That is the value of testing things. Sometimes the result is non obvious :)
quectophoton 2y ago
So maybe your advisor applet actually helped people, they were not buying just because it was the best choice for them given all the additional information you were now giving them? > I still don't know why it hurt conversions, but it did. Maybe people were indecisive and you just saved them trouble of trying stuff to find out for themselves. If it was a service, then maybe they were signing up just to try because they weren't sure, and then taking advantage of sunk cost fallacy by pulling out an Amazon Prime strategy. Or, maybe without the advisor applet they might sign up thinking they can get away with the cheapest version (e.g. like people who purchase 3-5 EUR/month VPS), but with the applet you deny those hopes right away. If it was physical products, then you might have helped them out of a bad purchase. > So we moved it from the homepage to a FAQ section of the site, and hardly anyone ever used it at all. Yeah I wouldn't expect to find it there. In the footer, maybe. But not in the F.A.Q., so there's that.

by raylad 2y ago

lathiat 2y ago

That is the value of testing things. Sometimes the result is non obvious :)

quectophoton 2y ago

So maybe your advisor applet actually helped people, they were not buying just because it was the best choice for them given all the additional information you were now giving them? > I still don't know why it hurt conversions, but it did. Maybe people were indecisive and you just saved them trouble of trying stuff to find out for themselves. If it was a service, then maybe they were signing up just to try because they weren't sure, and then taking advantage of sunk cost fallacy by pulling out an Amazon Prime strategy. Or, maybe without the advisor applet they might sign up thinking they can get away with the cheapest version (e.g. like people who purchase 3-5 EUR/month VPS), but with the applet you deny those hopes right away. If it was physical products, then you might have helped them out of a bad purchase. > So we moved it from the homepage to a FAQ section of the site, and hardly anyone ever used it at all. Yeah I wouldn't expect to find it there. In the footer, maybe. But not in the F.A.Q., so there's that.