In 1997, Apple was 90 days from bankruptcy. But how Steve Jobs saved the company proved he was a master of customer psychology.
Jobs returned as the head of Apple in 1997, 12 years after getting kicked out by his own board of directors and handpicked CEO John Scully. He’d kept himself busy, leading companies like Pixar and NeXT, but he KNEW he had to get back to Apple. And when he finally did, the first thing on his agenda was to meet the product team to review what Apple was selling.
It was a mess — they were making too many products for too many people. Apple was even producing more than a dozen different versions of the Macintosh computer to satisfy retailer demands.
That many products left customers totally confused… so they just didn’t buy anything.
After weeks of sitting through meeting after meeting, Jobs finally shouted, “Stop! This is crazy!” He walked to a whiteboard and drew up a 2×2 square. Jobs put one product in each box and killed the rest.
Jobs renewed Apple’s focus by simplifying its approach.
He knew that a great customer experience meant saying “no” much more than it meant saying “yes.”
So while in September 1997, Apple had lost over a billion dollars, only one year later they were turning a profit of $309 million.
The Psychological Dangers of Choice Overload
When there were too many products and product variations, Apple’s customers were experiencing analysis paralysis.
It’s that feeling of anxiety when you have so much information that any action feels like the wrong one, so you don’t do anything at all.
It’s down to something called the Choice Overload Effect (also called Overchoice).
It says that too many options can be a bad thing – they can confuse, overwhelm, and make it difficult to make a “good” decision.
And once people do make their choice, they can feel disappointed in it because they’re still not sure it’s the “right” one.
How Simplicity Encourages Sales
In practice, simplification and reduction of choice is more nuanced than just saying “less choice = more sales.”
A more refined view of choice in marketing is this:
“Lots of options can attract customers to browse your store and build trust in your brand, but narrowing down choices into easy to compare options makes people much more likely to buy.”
Not quite as catchy.
But in reality, any purchase process can easily become overcomplicated because most marketing or operations teams don’t go through the process much themselves – if at all.
Or, some unethical companies purposefully overcomplicate purchase decisions in the hope that you’ll agree to something you don’t really need to just get the whole thing over with.
Car dealers are notorious for this type of purchase process.
They ask you a million questions, purposefully drawing out the process, and ask you consider dozens of unfamiliar options like complicated financing options, extended warranties, services packages, GAP insurance, and wheel, tire, and paint protection.
Sure, you might consider a few of these things but by the time you’re in hour two of this process, you’re mentally exhasted and ready to say yes to anything just to get out the door.
How Simplicity Can Make You Impossible to Ignore
Let’s use a visual example of how simplicity can make for better marketing and better understanding. In this example of a poster from McDonald’s Australia, the simplicity of the message is what makes it effective.
We can use a form of attention analysis — called salience analysis — to see what customers are paying the most attention to (red is noticed, blue is ignored):
The most eye-catching images are the “wi-fry” signal and the McDonald’s logo — the reason they’re so successful is because they’re surrounded by negative space.
It’s the simplicity of this creative that makes it work so well — our eyes naturally land on the images because we’re not distracted by extra information.
To see what complexity does to attention and understanding, let’s add a few extra messages added (by me) to this poster:
You can see how there are lots more salient messages, but now the logo and the wi-fry signal aren’t as easily noticed. Most people don’t take the time to read copy anyway, so the entire poster becomes a bit of a waste.
While the simple creative attracted our gaze like a magnet, complexity pulled our attention in too many directions.
How to Make Customer Decisions Easier
If you want to make your purchase process simpler (and increase your sales and conversion rates), mapping it out can quickly make it clear where things need to get streamlined.
For example, here’s a quick visualization showing how customers who are watching their diet might make a decision about what to eat at a fast food restaurant:
If you think your decision process might be bloated or overcomplicated, I’d recommend doing an exercise like this one to visualize the options customers have to consider. To learn how Choice Hacking can help you do a decision audit like this one, get in touch.
The Bottom Line
When Steve Jobs simplified Apple’s product line, it didn’t just make it easier for the product team to focus. It also made their marketing much for effective (by having fewer messages to try and land), distilled their thinking (by giving them fewer problems to solve), and reduced production costs since there were now fewer products and variations to produce.
With fewer things to try and sell, more potent messages were landing with customers — they could better understand the brand promise, what products were available, and make an easier decision between Apple and its competitors.
If you want to simplify your marketing or customer experience, start by asking yourself:
- Where are customers getting frustrated in our experience? This might be indicated by increased dwell time, drop-off, or research that indicates frustration or anger. Look for opportunities to simplify information, messages, and interactions at this moment.
- If we look at our competitors’ experiences and compare them to ours, who has the simplest experience? Is this reflected in our sales or market share?
- Are there ways to move a process from the “main stage” to “back stage?” In other words, could employees, digital platforms, or even machine learning simplify the experience for customers by taking things off their plate?