Too many choices

‘Choice overload’, or ‘overchoice’ is a paradoxical phenomenon which describes how people get overwhelmed when they are presented with many options to choose from–they may even make no choice due to the sense of overwhelm.

We are often led to believe that more choice is a good thing or that big drop downs or less clicks are what we should all be aiming for online, but research often shows that people can have a harder time choosing from lots of options and that in fact less choice allows users to get where they need to go faster.

To think about this in a different way: Have you ever been to a restaurant that has a substantial menu to pick from? Have you been given the menu and just felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choices? How many times did the server have to return to the table before you - or someone in your party had decided what they wanted?

Are you ready to order?

Smaller menus are normally more helpful where we can compare between ten dishes to eat from rather than one with 150 options, right? When you're in a situation where there is 150 options we often start becoming unsure and become flustered by the sheer amount of choices on display.

That’s often when we start apologising to our party or the server for taking too long; it's awkward, it's overwhelming, you might feel pressured and it can be frustrating.

77% of people look at a restaurant menu before visiting a restaurant; we like to know what we’re going to eat, we want to avoid the pressure and the potential for making the wrong choice.

Now consider your website and it's menu - or navigation if you prefer - nobody can take a sneak peak at your navigation before they arrive at your destination; they're here, we don't know their situation and they want services or information we provide as quickly as possible.

They don’t know, what they don’t know

Most charities believe their website should work where (another restaurant analogy here, sorry) people walk into our restaurant and order their meal before knowing what type of cuisine you make.

I believe this is due to another common occurrence we see in most charities: we all know what we do, therefore we forget that people coming to our website may not yet know that information.

Your website should be there to clearly explain and educate to users what you do, how you can help them and get them to where they need to go with as little friction as possible.

We also need to consider the situation that person is in, or the services your charity provides and who those users are. Do you support people in crisis? Are you supporting people with domestic abuse concerns?

How those people feel and react are incredibly important when coming to our website, so don't overwhelm them in the hope that one of the many options provided might resonate with them.

Take a step back

So how can we prevent the overchoice phenomenon? Stop thinking about your website being a wikipedia of everything that you do and start thinking about what the choices are and who they resonate with.

Amount of links and their importance

How many links are in your navigation? Count them, are their also dropdowns? How important is everything that is listed? Can you truly say they are all as important as one another or are some there for another reason?
Something such as a link to 'News' would not normally be as important as 'Get support' for example. Why? Well it's more likely more of your audience need to access your support services and they are a core user persona for the organisation.
Who is 'News' resonating with? Who is going to look through all of your news posts and why would they be doing that? A news post may be important, but the A-Z of everything you've ever posted-potentially not so.
Do you have a 'Home' link? Does the logo of your organisation also go there? Then why have both-most users click a logo and expect it to take them back to the homepage.
How relevant are the labels of your navigation links? Does 'About us' take a user to a page about the history if your organisation or is it a list of all of the team members? Does it go to your impact? That ambiguity in the naming of navigation labels can trip people up and if they're in urgent need of help that can be problematic.

Distractions

Have you got social media channels in your header or navigation areas? That's like trying to look at the restaurant menu and someone’s tapping on the window telling you their menu is better - it's distracting. Social Media should be used to get people to our website, not distract them in moving away from us.
If someone clicks the Instagram link from your navigation bar we've failed: they couldn't find what they wanted, went to your Instagram to find what they wanted and before they know it they're looking at their DM's, watching stories and forget why they were here in the first place.
Newsletters are a common problem, we want to increase sign ups so put it in the navigation bar, but is it truly as important as increasing your donations or providing support? If not, it needs less emphasis and the footer of websites is a common place for those to live.

Vie for eyes

By reducing the sheer amount of choices we not only give focus to what's important and get our users to where they need to go quicker but it also makes our navigation just easier on the eye.
By having a more reduced amount of navigation options, things that are particularly important to us - like a 'Donate' or 'Get Help' button can become the sole primary call to action that can do more of the heavy lifting and vie for your users' eyes.

Next Steps

If your navigation does provide a lot of options, you might have read this guide, agree that you want to do something about overchoice issues on your website but are unsure of where to begin - especially with how busy you might be.

Don’t worry; start by simply outlining who your different audience types are and ensuring that they have one clear and obvious choice each within your navigation.

Examples such as a 'Supporter' user type having a Get Involved’ link to quickly get them to all of the ways they can support you or a 'High-value Donor' having an 'Our Impact' section to quickly help them get up to speed with who you are in a timely manner–may help to get you started.

Understanding what the true purpose behind each section of your website will help to align it with your different audience types and that's what your navigation should reflect.

In our free workbook, The For Good Guide we delve deeper into the purpose of pages and outlining user journeys. This workbook is easy to pick up and work on whenever you are able to so, which provides another way of considering the reduction of choices in your navigation and having a more focussed experience for everyone.

Choice overload: Less is more