Giving people too much choice

Seven pricing tiers: the corporate equivalent of handing someone a restaurant menu written by procurement. It looks comprehensive. It also makes the burger feel like a research project. Streaming services offer enough films to occupy several lifetimes, then watch people retreat to the sitcom they already know. Choice creates imagined regret before anything has even been chosen.

The fashionable answer is “fewer options”, delivered with the confidence of someone who has just discovered scissors. Sometimes that works. Yet twenty clearly different choices can be easier than three plans separated by a feature nobody understands. The real problem is unhelpful distinction. Starter, Starter Plus and Starter Plus Max reveal that the company could not decide who each product serves, so it has invited the customer to finish the meeting. Name options for recognisable jobs. Expose the sacrifice attached to each. Recommend one with enough conviction that a buyer can disagree intelligently. Defaults should carry judgement, not quietly mug the inattentive.

Range is useful when customers genuinely want different outcomes. Beyond that, every surviving option should face an awkward question: what decision does this help somebody make? If the answer is “it keeps a stakeholder happy”, hide it in the warehouse with the other internal compromises. Flexibility is a benefit. Outsourced indecision is just admin wearing a friendly badge.