Author: Ece Babaoğlu
To start with, let me introduce you what Hick’s Law is. It simply shows us that the time it takes to make a decision is increased with the number and complexity of choices. Companies with different objectives search for different ways and techniques for optimizing their business operations, raising awareness of their brands, and creating better relationships with customers. Different companies and applications implement different ways of communication. I will give some different examples of this situation regarding different business models as follows:
I would like to take your attention to world’s largest community drivn hospitality company Airbnb, used by both hosts and customers. It is reported that it is the most popular platform for accommodation-sharing, which is used by 2.9 million hosts on Airbnb worldwide, with 100,000 active cities, 220 active countries, and regions with active Airbnb listings in 2022.
The application uses a personalization strategy to get the users engaged with them. For example, calling them by their names during the different phases of the website/application’s usage. It is a great way to make the users get familiarized and make them feel unique as a part of the overall positive experience when using the product. Apart from that, Airbnb gathers the data that the user is using the application outside of his/her home country, and adjacent cities are shown to the user for leverage awareness of the context. Therefore, a more convenient search experience is provided without wasting time with much fewer possible alternatives such as randomly provided offerings. Airbnb could increase their conversion & save users precious time by using past search data patterns to suggest default filters for users' searches. Additionally, the past data which is gained from the users are used to suggest the most appropriate filters for improving the user experience in fewer seconds to do the task. The filters lead the users in a more logical sense and a quicker manner. However, a lot of filters can harm the engagement of the users and it could lead to a loss of interest, occasionally. The users would not rather be in a situation with endless options or questions. A board that is customized utterly for the user’s needs is certainly what a good user experience provider firm can serve for their customers. This personalization efforts of the company will also reduce the churn rate which means “the rate at which customers stop doing business with an entity”. An application that puts effective functionality on top will lead the way to be competent in its area of business. Overall, these demonstrate the effect of considering Hick’s Law and personalization for providing a better experience and accessibility for the users.
Secondly, let me introduce you to Trello. Trello could be explained as an ultimate management tool, acquired by Atlassian in 2017. It aims to manage all of your teams’ from anywhere you want; the tasks, teammates, and tools brought all together. With the help of Trello, a start-up board could be launched in just a few seconds, to collaborate remotely from different places, bringing automation to tasks that are tiresome if done manually. I will mention some of the actions that Trello made, to leverage user experience. It is worth for notice how Trello removed most of its menu links, which is an interesting way to boost its conversion rate.
Despite the benefits of the navigation links, they could make the customers leave the onboarding process which is undeniably a situation for Trello or any application to avoid; according to Hick’s Law. It is reported that, for important pages like signup, header navigation would increase the conversion rate by 28%. Another point of importance for creating simplicity is a well-crafted persona-based onboarding of the product. It means that the user will easily adapt to the application/website platform and will be ready to get her/his first step into it. One way of it will be through the way that the application may not ask endless questions, rather one simple question will be helpful for better understanding for the users. Next, there is the “endowment effect” that makes you value something more as you get a “feeling of ownership” of that product. With just a little effort, without the hassle, the user will get quite familiar with the product and will value the product more by just a little effort of customization into the default board.
To sum up, many companies still consider that the more options that they offer to the users, the best; however, studies have shown that despite little navigation is beneficial for the user experience, it is better to minimize the cognitive load and make the product less overwhelming, seeing that less is more.
Resources:
Deane, Steve. “2022 Airbnb Statistics: Usage, Demographics, and Revenue Growth.” Stratos Jet Charters, Inc., 7 Nov. 2022, https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/.
Frankenfield, Jake. “Churn Rate: What It Means, Examples, and Calculations.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 19 Dec. 2022, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/churnrate.asp.
Growthdotdesign. “Airbnb: How to Reduce Churn with Personalization.” Growth.Design, Growth.Design, 20 Nov. 2019, https://growth.design/case-studies/airbnb-personalization.
Growthdotdesign. “Trello User Onboarding: 7 Tactics to Inspire You.” Growth.Design, Growth.Design, 17 July 2019, https://growth.design/case-studies/trello-user-onboarding.
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