So, if you are new to the Internet and just getting started, I would strongly urge you to find your niche and own it and that means less choice.

I still disagree. New products should not limit their options solely because of ‘paradox of choice’. I elaborated about my view on my blog to make my argument a little more concrete. What do you think?

But I’m not refering to simplicity here but to creating a linear path to the sale. Some marketers call this the “most wanted response.” It means building your site to push the visitor down a singular path towards the sale.

Many sites confuse the user with unnecessary links and options BEFORE the user is sold on the product. Hence the drop in conversion.

Yes, customers love choice indeed and that is clearly the wave of the future. I think you touch on one very important point and that is presentation. If you have many options, you need to have great presentation.

In fact, the Internet is all about choice. Amazon offers far more books than any book store could ever carry and Netflix offers far more DVDs than any Blockbuster. That is the power of the long tail and there is an excellent book about the long tail that I highly recommend reading.

However, when it comes to small businesses getting started online offering more choice, more products is often what will hurt them. First, they can never compete with the bigger sites that offer even more choice and second it is much harder to nail the presentation, navigation and copy and make a site sell that offers lots of choices.

So, if you are new to the Internet and just getting started, I would strongly urge you to find your niche and own it and that means less choice.

Remember — less options will almost always lead to more sales.

I can’t help but to disagree on this one. The problem with choice is not that more of it is worse, but rather that it is, in fact, an optimization problem. I think a lot of Barry Schwartz’s ideas are often slightly misunderstood. We love choice — Western society loves to talk about ‘individualism’, and how else can you achieve that but through choice? Should your clothing store only offer a single pair of jeans? Scion’s success is purely due to choice — for the first time you could customize your car straight from the factory. Talk about a lot of choices… Too much may give you diminishing returns, but that’s not an argument for reverting back to lack of it.

Here’s the catch, and it’s something you pointed to: presentation is the source of the problem. You should not overwhelm the user with all the choices at once (many advertisers are at fault here). Let’s take the example of Apple and Dell. Apple has a small lineup of products, everything is plain and simple for them. What about Dell? Hundreds of models! However, they still have a very successful web-site because they effectively winnow the ‘product space’. First thing you do when you enter their page is choose your ‘consumer type’ (business, consumer, govt). It takes 1 click to eliminate over 60% of the options, and all of the sudden it’s a manageable search space. As a consumer I’m happy, I can customize and get the exact model I need, and Dell is happy. Now imagine what would happen if Dell put every single model on their homepage? Well, then we really do have a problem!

People love to customize; we all want to feel unique in what we buy, and what we own.

When I’m at a restaurant I’m overwhelmed with choice and it takes me ages to choose what to eat.

When I’m at home it’s baked beans, with or without toast.