What would happen if you walked into Baskin Robbins and you saw rows of ice cream buckets? Now I’m not talking about a mere 31 flavors, but let’s just say for the sake of this illustration that you were greeted with 200 flavors to choose from.
I’d be willing to be that like me, you might stare in awe, perhaps the same way a deer does in headlights. You might even panic, and feel anxiety of the fact that you have OVER 200 CHOICES of ice cream to work with.
In extreme cases, you can’t even handle it, so you just walk out.
No Psychology Degree Needed
You don’t have to have be a psychologist to understand that too many choices can be a bad thing, and possibly even kill your business. If you don’t believe me that often times less is more, go ahead and… read all of these articles.
And if those don’t convince you, then check out what American Psychologist Barry Schwartz has to say in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, where he writes convincing points like this:
When people are faced with having to choose one option out of many desirable choices, they will begin to consider hypothetical trade-offs. Their options are evaluated in terms of missed opportunities instead of the opportunity’s potential. One of the downsides of making trade-offs is it alters how we feel about the decisions we face; afterwards, it affects the level of satisfaction we experience from our decision.
I’m not a business major, but I can tell you that these are not emotions that I want those shopping for my products to experience.
How This Applies to My Business
Over at StudioPress, we currently have 41 child themes that are available for the Genesis Framework. We maintain a quality vs. quantity approach, and I personally make sure that our themes are the highest quality they can be for our users.
In fact, often times I relate the quality of our WordPress themes to the military concept of None Left Behind – where I fail to move forward on development of a new theme if I feel that I need to go back and update an older one.
It sounds corny, but there’s a lot of truth in making sure your themes are top notch, or that ice cream flavors aren’t mass produced and taste as good as possible.
Choice Can Be a Good Thing
Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not bashing choice and having a wide variety of selection for your buyers. There are times when it’s perfectly ok to offer up 20 or 30 (or sometimes even more) choices for them.
As much as you think mass-production will correlate to sales, there’s a chance that over-production (or too many choices) can kill your business.
If you’re uncertain about the variety you have, perhaps post a poll for your users to see if your selection is too few, too many or just enough.
With that said, let’s take an imprompt poll down in the comments of this post about the amount of themes we have over at StudioPress.
Too few, too many, or just enough?
Honestly, I’m the first person to quickly walk out when I’m over-whelmed by the menu at an establishment – too many choices. For some (myself included), that’s crippling. One of the reasons I don’t like eating at the Cheesecake Factory. Too many options on that menu and somehow, I almost always end up ordering the wrong thing, heh. The cheesecake is good though
As for the Themes available at StudioPress, honestly, I don’t know that I’ve felt over-whelm. Maybe it’s my bias towards StudioPress (you all do great work). But when I look at the themes, features, lay-out, etc. I get a pretty good sense of what theme I want to use. So in that respect, it’s not all that over-whelming, I can choose easily.
Ricardo, it’s funny that you are the first to reply to this because when Googling to check my rankings after publishing this post, I noticed that a blog post you recently wrote called The Problem With Too Many Options came up. Like you, I hate having too many options to choose from – whether it’s pizza or flavors of Starbucks lattes (hee hee), for me too many is, well, too much.
Heh, I wrote that post out of my frustration eating at the Cheesecake Factory that weekend. But really, in business, and in general too many choices is crippling.
Ever have a barista ask you a million questions? Non-fat or regular? Foam or no foam? Medium or large? Would you like an extra shot of espresso with that? (I don’t know if I want an extra shot or not. How many shots does it normally come with?) Really, I just want my coffee darn it.
It’s amazing how many business lessons we can teach simply by blogging about our trivial life experiences. Like yours with the Cheesecake Factory, or how Dave Matthews taught me a few things about branding. #goodstuff
I just woke up from the best nap in the world and this is the first thing I come across to read for the night – it’s good, too.
As a fitness pro, my job is to REMOVE choices that my clients have to make on a daily basis in order to get them to succeed. Many of my people already have the tools, knowledge and ability to achieve their fitness goals alone, however they don’t.
Why?
The main reason is due to all the information out there and it makes it hard for even the most knowledgeable person to make a decision. So, when they come to me, I become the dictator, make the rules and remove their ability to screw things up by when they decide it’s time to make that choice to do something different than they originally set out to do the week before.
This is easily my favorite part of your comment…
Sometimes I feel like we live in a society where we’re not intellectually starving, rather intellectually obese – too many ideas, too many options, too many ways of doing things. Too many flavors of ice cream, etc…
yup – totally agree. We’re often dead in our tracks due to indecision. As someone who suffers from mad amounts of ADD, too many decisions has been to my demise many times. Give me ONE option.
P.S. Love the “Featured Section” on your site, by the way. A great example of how someone *smart* can kickstart their email list building.
thanks a lot. much thought went into my current design (I’ve redesigned it 4 times!!) and I plan to keep it this way for a while. Still learning my way around Genesis, but building my site was a great way to get my feet wet.
41 child themes seems like a good number. I think it’s good that StudioPress has branched out into a different set of themes as well, because like you said in the post, an overwhelming amount of choices in one area can have adverse effects on decision making.
The WordPress theme landscape is intriguing, though, because I believe it is just as bad to have too few themes as to have too many. Too few themes makes you look like an amateur that doesn’t know quite how to run a business, but too many themes makes you look like you value quantity over quality. But I don’t think there is an exact number or a sweet spot in it all. Ultimately, if your themes are coded better than anybody else’s, then no amount of themes that you produce than can reduce that fact – it can only affect the perceived quality, and that’s the line you need not cross, no matter if it’s 20 themes or 200 themes.
Keeping things fresh always helps too. Archiving old and outdated themes and keeping a fresh stock of new ones (but still allowing users to find the older ones) out in front of customers can keep the choice sweats away.
Thomas – pretty much sounds like you’re onto us.
For me, it’s sometimes more fun to update a theme and bring it back to life, than to release a new one!
I guess the secret’s out now.
That’s always good to do too, especially if they are themes that you hold dear or that have done particularly well, like AgentPress. Genesis’ new coat of paint looks particularly shiny as well!
Well it all started with the update to Lifestyle, which was outdated and desperately needed a facelift. Next came the (also much needed) update to the Magazine theme, which I’m thrilled about.
And both of those quickly got picked up for WordPress.com with refreshes (at least I think both weren’t chosen until after their 2.0 versions), which further speaks to the power of a good ole’ updating.
That wasn’t a coincidence.
Shortly after we updated those themes, we choose to put them into WordPress.com. Currently they aren’t picking themes from us to go there – we’re choosing them ourselves based on what our top sellers are, and what makes sense for WordPress.com users. The theme team over there trusts our judgement, and we’ve proven that we’re making solid decisions.
Well, well – that is certainly a good place to be.
You guys have made some great decisions in that respect! Those themes (especially Lifestyle, that style is -in-) seem to fit well with how WordPress.com works and functions with its community of users.
And to tie it together, you’ve got a wonderful community of users behind StudioPress, so creating and releasing relevant, top quality themes will continue to be “the theme” for the path ahead.
I’ve hacked my way through various WordPress themes and frameworks and none of them have been as easy, nor as intuitive as Genesis.
My favorite thing of all about Genesis and having a developers license is how the child themes are laid out and structured. I can easily take a theme that has a home.php file with various functions I like and create a new home.php for whatever theme I wish to get my desired effect.
This also makes it easier for handing the design off to clients because I can generally make the home page easily editable using widgets, instead of before when I’d build it all manually and have to edit it every so often when they needed something changed (ughhh).
Thomas was the first one who told me about how well-structured the themes/framework was. I didn’t believe it until I finally dug in and now I’m a convert.
WOOT! I love hearing folks say they have converted to Genesis!
Solid thoughts here Brian.
Great advice for bloggers new and old as well. Offering a broad range of topics could hinder your ability to convert readers if that’s what you’re after.
When I started my WordPress company we were offering a TON of options that was scaring away the customer AND my team. Because our workflow was so spread out (so many different tasks) we couldn’t stabilize on an effective flow.
Now we’re much more focused and efficient!
Funny that you angled your comment towards blogging and topics – I didn’t quite put that concept into mind when writing this, but as we both know I’ve struggled (until lately) with blogging here. Niche blogs are so powerful because they portray the focus of the writer, and showcase the “here’s what I got and I’m good at it” mentality.
41 child themes isn’t overwhelming to me. Actually 41 (+) is better I think. I use StudioPress to build client sites, so I have the advantage of knowing what particular theme features I’m looking for when I start looking through the themes which helps me narrow it down quickly to a few choices.
Truthfully, I like it better when there are three or four theme choices that meet my client’s criteria because then I can usually find the one of the group that is the best fit in look, functionality and style which makes my job a lot easier. (Why rebuild the whole thing when parts of it are great?)
I consider it part of my job to know and stay familiar with the different themes, but that’s easy because I really enjoy “playing” with them and learning by tearing them down and rebuilding them or mixing a couple of themes together. StudioPress themes (and the StudioPress support forum) have been the best WordPress education I could have ever hoped for!
I agree with Thomas Griffin about keeping things fresh in the theme offerings. Sometimes I will steer a client towards the new themes you have (as long as it meets their basic criteria) simply because I want to try and learn something new. Like the Scribble theme. I like that one so much and it is so different from what I’ve previously done that I’m working on redoing my own site with Scribble!
Also agree with JC Deen that StudioPress themes are great for handing off to clients so they can manage the their own site with a small amount of training.
I might change my tune if there were 200+ themes or something and it was just too difficult to find what you are looking for like some theme providers, but I also think you would probably do a good job and put in the work to make it all navigable if that were the case.
StudioPress makes me look WAY better than I actually am! Enjoying your blog. Keep it up!
Hey Craig – thanks so much for taking the time to comment (and in such depth.) It’s good to hear that like me, other developers really have knowledge of which themes can do what. The Scribble theme was really an experiment to try something new, even if it meant teaching folks how to configure a homepage and to use anchor tags for links via custom menus.
To be honest, my hope is to never exceed 100 themes. I just can’t imagine any real reason to have that many. I’d rather make the ones we have no more robust and allow them to be used across many niches.
or, you can just start another subsidiary, name it something else and have a bunch of new, awesome themes under that
Heh, for grins I think about doing that, but of course won’t. Although it’s amazing how many times we’ve been accused of doing that at the Theme Marketplace.
And if you want proof, here ya go!
Yeah, I think you have it fairly well covered. With a little experience and trial and error a person can make just about anything with the existing themes. The only places I could see expanding a little more are in very specific niches like Agent Press does with real estate or in experimenting with themes that are a lot different than the normal StudioPress theme, like Scribble. Of course, experimental themes might not sell as well, but I’d sure dig it!
oh brother…
No joke. I’m like… really? We’re going to create all of these individual companies, Twitter accounts, forum accounts, etc just to make a few bucks?
umm, well, this is the internetz after all.
Hey Brian, great post… and I agree, you keep your number of themes at a reasonable level. I get so many clients who are already overwhelmed with choosing themes, that going to some reseller with hundreds of them don’t make it any easier. That’s why I send so many here : )
And as far as my own experience. Having had a marketing business for 20+ years, over most of that time we offered it all… print design of everything, copywriting, web design, blah, blah, blah… And we felt we needed to do it to compete. In fact, we added photography and more along the way. But heck, it made tough for an elevator speech.
So over the last few years we focused down, eliminated services and what my wife calls “nichefying”. When I made the choice three years ago to focus just on design of WordPress websites, and nothing else, it was the best move I ever made. Now I’m down to training and support on WP, and it’s working great.
I think the biggest challenge for any business is to take that step to make your choices fewer and more focused. Eg. when we stopped print design, those first few calls for print projects were hard to turn down, but we did it. And everything came out good in the end.
Great post Brian (and a tough call).
In my speaking, I use the “Cheesecake Factory” analogy. If you have ever been there, you will know what I mean about too many choices (I always just end up getting a burger).
Having been with StudioPress (back when it was a “revolution”
for a long time, I have to say that it is a fine line.
My suggestion would be to allow growth for as many themes that are truly different. In my opinion, a couple of the themes are too similar. In that they count as a whole new theme towards the confusion angle you are speaking of.
The ONLY reason I end up with a non studio press theme for a client is that they are looking for a simpler theme (largely because some of our clients are not into dealing with that many photos). Usually Mocha fits the bill.
In general marketing it is a matter of be exclusive or be unique. Go for uniqueness without sacrificing quality – always a good model.
Godfadr
PS> No one can come close to the support level in the StudioPress community!
You know, Brian, I got the whole shebang from you (Genesis, Themes, and Premise anyway) and I am impressed with the selection you have. Honestly, as in my case, the ability to tailor the child themes to my needs is pretty sufficient. I simply use a base child theme and customize to my liking.
I think in the child theme arena, some folks just want the vision in their head to be available on the site for download. It’s a little much to ask. Quite honestly, in the 9 months I have been blogging, the SEO features alone in Genesis astound me. I’ve been in the top 5 on Google out of millions of results several times. Often within days of posting. I really cannot complain.
And Premise? I just built an awesome landing page, fumbling through it, I might add… (I don’t read instructions very well) and I LOVE IT! Awesome stuff. Even at my not so elevated level in the blog world.
Keep doing what you do. It’s all good.
41 is not too much. Because most of the themes aren’t of any use for me. If you categorize them or give us the option to filter them, then it’s no problem at all to have 60 or even 80 themes. For example: “tumblr-style”, “photography”, “business”, “blogger”, “news & magazine” …
If you go to Wal mart, you usually don’t complain about 1,000+ products. You go to the section you’re looking for. Sometimes it’s not a matter of “less is more”, but “how do you categorize and order things.”
Brian, I totally agree that giving customers too many options will make it harder to make a decision. I see it all the time with clients, and is something I struggle with when taking on a new clients and letting them see examples of past work. How much is too much…I don’t know. If I could figure it out, things would be a lot simpler!
Regarding the amount of Studiopress themes, as Daniel mentioned above, most of them I never use for clients, because they’re blog designs, and not more CMS based. I would love to see more business specific themes available, geared towards small, local, serviced based businesses. My primary clients.
Thanks for the feedback Seth – what kind in particular? We’ve got a number of CMS based themes – ones like Associate, Corporate, Metric, Minimum, Agency, etc…
All of those are great, I use Corporate & Metric all the time. (My own site is currently based off of Agency.) Would love to see more similar to those, with a static home.php setup, as opposed to the more blog-centric or news type themes. Legacy & Maximum in the marketplace are two others that I really like.
Any chance of adding the Driskill type responsive design into the core Genesis core?
It’s possible, and something that I’ve discussed with Bill directly about helping with. More to come.
I love the diversity of themes offered by StudioPress. I have finally converted all of my WP sites from Thesis to Genesis for two main reasons:
1) The variety of themes available
2) Genesis’ ability to play nicely with the wp core and wp plugins
Oh, and I also use Premise as well. Love you guys!
Hey Jeff – great to hear such positive feedback about Genesis. (and also good to know that our efforts to play nicely – and sometimes backdown to – WordPress core functionality has been noticed!)
Fantastic! Almost every new client I get asks about mobile compatibility, and since most aren’t using their site as a blog, plugins like WPtouch don’t work very well.
I utterly agree we you Brain. Giving customers too many options will make it harder to make a decision. On the other hand it depends on the blogtheme. Sometimes i´m glad about to have great selection.
These are some good points. Too many choices id definitely a bit over whelming. I will stick it out and choose, but with negligence, for I don’t want to miss out on another.
I looked and it appeared you have 20 or so in the drop down menu.
For me, I would just want them all, for I would have a tough time deciding on just one.