Why Apple owners are smug and Dell owners are insecure – explained with examples from web design and the jam trade

Posted: October 28th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Content, email-marketing, Media, Twitter | 4 Comments »

It’s obvious that choice is the enemy of decisiveness. It’s less well known that choice is the enemy of happiness.

The jam experiment is a popular example among web design gurus. Conducted in 2000, it demonstrated that when offered a choice of 24 jams, people bought fewer than when offered a choice of 6. That’s why, for example, Apple hardly give you any choice at all  – paralysed by the amount of research it takes to choose the best possible Android or RIM handset, customers fall back on spending £200 extra on something that offers you 2 options  – ‘black iPhone’, or ‘white iPhone (coming soon)’.

One of the first things you learn in web page design is that if you give people too many options, they become crippled with indecision and go and look at a video of a kitten on youtube instead.

That isn’t the interesting bit.

The interesting bit comes after people have bought their jam.

It turns out that the people who had more choice thought their jam tasted worse. Even if they chose precisely the same jar of jam as the shopper with fewer choices, they reported enjoying it less. The fear that we’ve bought the wrong kind of jam is enough to tell our tastebuds that we don’t really like what we’re spreading on 0ur toast.

That means a number of things. It explains why Dell users are insecure, Apple users are smug, and people who are total suckers for marketing, and couldn’t make an informed decision if their bank balances depended on it often seem to be the happiest in the world. Until Cockney Dave comes round to break their knees for the compound interest they owe on their Roomba’s.

It means that if Apple offered customers more chances to customise their ridiculous jabscreens, they would actually take less pleasure in them.

And for those of us who work in web design, it means that offering too many options doesn’t just have an impact on conversions. It also means that when your customers have finished shopping, they’ll be less happy with whatever they’ve bought from you.

(And in case you’re wondering, this post was typed on a Dell computer, and Tweeted from an Android Phone).

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  • http://behindblueeyes.co.uk Blue Eyes

    Wow this is one of those truths which is immediately obvious once it has been uttered. The question of why iPhone users are so unbearably in love with their devices has plagued me ever since I decided that my perfectly good Android phone isn't cool enough. Apple did not used to have such a restricted product range. When I was a spotty teenager with a Mac there were 101 different models. They are doing rather better as a company now than they were then!

    I would quite like a Mac and an iPhone but they are so stupidly expensive that I probably never will.

  • http://twitter.com/matthewadamhook Matthew Hook

    well then blue eyes you should probably get yourself an iPad, which combines all the smugness of a Mac or iPhone with a lower pricepoint and none of that pesky utility. the best thing is, you don't even have to use it – just get it in and out of its little sleeve all the time and swoosh your finger around a bit.

  • buenosam

    I keep entering competitions to win an iPad – I can't justify buying one at all, but it's their complete uselessness for anything practical that makes them so intensely desirable.

    Glowy flat thing make it better… Mmmmm.