Ask IH: Is having too much choice bad?
Hey all!
I really worked hard to attract over 60 incredible mentors for https://mentorcruise.com. Many of them are home in common engineering topics, Web Dev, Mobile Dev, but we also have some very nice mentors in Machine Learning and Entrepreneurship (including a YC founder!)
I'm always working on improving how people filter through that list, but I'm at a point where I'm thinking that too much choice might be bad. Someone who is plainly looking for someone to help them build an Android app might be overwhelmed with the many Android mentors.
I'm actually thinking about launching a second streamlined and standalone offer. Something like 'Your personal mentor for $50/month' which would just randomly select one of the matching mentors based on a survey and pair them up. What do you think?
I would look for a way to categorize them according to what people are looking for, what would they respond to, stuff like teaching style maybe, their niche areas of expertise... just throwing out ideas here, you'll probably know what makes sense the most.
In general, yes. However, in your case, it seems like laying all of the options out there may be the best way to go. If I'm trying out a new restaurant for the first time, a 5-page front-and-back 10 pt. typed menu would be extremely overwhelming. But if I'm in the market for a mentor, I would want to sift through a directory and have as much say as possible in my choice.
Look at it from the perspective of your customer in both scenarios:
I'm looking for a Web Dev mentor. I go to the "Web Development Mentors" page and read through dozens of profiles making a mental list of my favorites. When I feel like I've seen as much as I can see, I go back through my list of favorites and narrow it down. I iterate through this process until I've narrowed my decision down to a mentor I feel very confident in. I feel that I've had 100% autonomy in my choice and look forward to meeting with this person. If my decision ends up being a bad one, I can drop this mentor and go with my runner-up or pick an entirely new one.
I'm looking for a Web Dev mentor. I go to the "Mentor Roulette" wheel and pay for a spin. I get paired with a mentor that I'm not excited about. I decide to stick with it, putting some faith in the "pairing algorithm" that matched us. A month goes by and I'm still unsatisfied. I've had no say in my decision and ultimately have a negative opinion of the website and its process. I can start over, spinning the wheel and getting assigned another mentor at random, or I can take my business elsewhere.
Which one would you rather experience as a customer? Personally, I'd go with #1. One thing I noticed was that the list I was presented had no obvious filters at all. If I were looking, I would want characteristics to filter by.
This is mostly my opinion, so take it as you wish, but this is how I would go about it. UX is important yet often overlooked.
Directories have stood the test of time for a reason. People enjoy having a say in their lives.
Very nice analogy, thanks for that.
Which list do you mean, and which characteristics do you mean? One issue I think is that I have advances filters (search field, services, category, price) for logged in users, which it says in the text above, but I guess people don't read it. I'm thinking about adding the advances filters for unregistered users as well.
I missed the text above the directory but that's not to say most people do. That's more of a problem with what my brain ignores. If you were thinking of changing that to make it stand out more, consider doing a CTA box that highlights it a bit more. Something like this: https://i.imgur.com/iT0Ow1uh.png.
By characteristics I mean the obvious - such as skills - but I also mean spoken/written language fluency, timezone, and other attributes that will factor into how easy it will be to communicate with this mentor.
You may consider adding filters for unregistered users but under no circumstances would I allow a connection to be made away from the platform. I didn't dig too deep, but I did notice that I could go to a Mentor's profile and email them myself. If I were you, I'd allow unregistered users to window shop, but anything further would require them to register and follow the appropriate process. If the Mentor's want to advertise their services elsewhere, that's totally reasonable. MentorCurise doesn't own them. However, it does seem unreasonable for a user to be able to circumvent your process after finding a Mentor on MentorCruise.
I really like your idea by the way. You've executed it well. I'm impressed!
I see, okay great.
Especially the part about the characteristics is very good to know. By the way, I always make sure that mentors are fluent in English, but especially the timezone thing has been an issue and I might add a filter for that.
I just added the slimmed down filter box and we'll see if I see any difference in terms of user behaviour. As for the privacy thing, is it because you googled their name or because of the social profiles that are connected?
Thanks a lot for your very kind words.
Privacy isn't as much of a concern as users circumventing your service to connect with these mentors. I went straight to one of the mentor's profiles and could have emailed them directly. This could lead to users establishing relationships/plans with your mentors outside of your service. Maybe you designed it that way and that's fine. Just wanted to point out that, if it were my service, I would make sure the connection could only be made via the process I'd built. Does that make sense?
Makes perfect sense, just wondering how I could prevent this. Thanks for your feedback!
Hmm choice paralysis is a real thing, but what's your reason for thinking it's the #1 problem in front of you right now? What are your users saying and how are they behaving? I use Upwork all the time and face dozens of choices for who to hire, but it's never stopped me. The first thing you should do before building any solutions is confirm that you've accurately identified the problem.
I see that I have tons of clicks on my mentor lists, some register and get access to filters, which they also use a lot, but then don't follow through, close the window.
I'm wondering if it's a problem with my filters (they are pretty basic) or with the choice/attention span.
In that case, I can think of numerous other possible explanations for why people aren't continuing rather than just choice paralysis. For example:
Once people have the mentors' info, they take it and use it for their own purposes and no longer need your site.
There aren't any mentors in your list that people actually want to connect with, at least not for the price you're charging (if any).
People weren't serious in the first place and were just curious what kinds of results they would see.
People are serious about finding a mentor, but when it comes time to select one, they decide they're not quite ready and will come back later.
There's not enough information for people to make an informed decision, so they lose interest and leave.
etc.
You can test some theories pretty easily, but I'm not sure there's a better substitute than just talking to your (potential) customers and asking them.