MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

There is an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion that we have been fol­low­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in regard­ing con­sumer choice.  There are two parts to this equation:

First, we have been liv­ing in an age where choice is explod­ing and the Inter­net fur­ther accel­er­ated this trend.  That is why one of the top books on this topic is called: “The Long Tail: How End­less Choice Is Cre­at­ing Unlim­ited Demand”

I firmly agree with the power of the long tail and that more choice is dri­ving more con­sumer demand.  If you read The Long Tail, you will find lots of exam­ples that sup­port this analy­sis.  They talk that the power of search and great online nav­i­ga­tion is mak­ing it eas­ier to offer more, espe­cially when the costs of offer­ing more choice have almost fallen to zero.  That is a very com­pelling argu­ment and def­i­nitely very true when you look at choice from a con­sumer point of view.

So, at an aggre­gate level I largely agree with Ilya Grig­orik when he writes about “The Non-Paradox of Choice.”  How­ever, what is true in aggre­gate at the con­sumer level is not true for you, the small entre­pre­neur that wants to get started and become suc­cess­ful online.

First of all, if you are new to the Inter­net, it is far eas­ier to cre­ate a very com­pelling web­site that focuses on one or very few prod­ucts than on many prod­ucts.  Lots of chal­lenges disappear. 

• You don’t have to worry about find­abil­ity — search & navigation
• You can focus on one very clear mes­sage and go straight for the benefits

Lets pick one mar­ket for exam­ple, the Inter­net Mar­ket­ing space.  Here, you could offer many prod­ucts or cre­ate one page focused on just sell­ing one product. 

The laser focused site will be far eas­ier to build and to mar­ket (online mar­ket­ing can be very tar­geted) and within this one cat­e­gory you can achieve very good sales.   For exam­ple, we rather go and build a niche site such as www.AdWordsSystemExposed.com than to try to build a store offer­ing many Inter­net Mar­ket­ing products. 

Of course, not every mar­ket is cre­ated equal but if you are new to the Inter­net, I think you will do your­self a favor by focus­ing first and then expand­ing later.  Even then, expand­ing by build­ing lots of niche sites might be a bet­ter strategy. 

That does not mean that con­sumers don’t like choice.  They have almost infi­nite choice when they start search­ing on Google but by the time they find your site, you should have a very clear, focused, and sim­ple web­site that artic­u­lates the ben­e­fits and leads cus­tomers down a path to buy from you.  If Often, you can do that most effec­tively by focus­ing on only one or a few items. 

This is espe­cially true if you are new to the Internet. 

In Sum­mary:  More choice makes con­sumers happy but offer­ing less choices on your web­site will make it far eas­ier for new­bies to become suc­cess­ful online marketers.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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