Hobson's +1 Choice Effect

Hobson's Choice

The term "Hobson's Choice" comes from Thomas Hobson, a 17th-century English livery stable owner who required customers to take the horse in the stall nearest the door, or none at all. While this may not seem like much of a choice, it was actually more than most people had at the time, as most stables would only allow customers to choose between the best horse or no horse at all.

Despite its origins, the phrase "Hobson's Choice" is now often used to describe any situation where someone is forced to choose between two undesirable options.

What is Hobson's +1 Choice Effect?

The Hobson's 1 Choice effect is a cognitive bias that occurs when people are presented with a choice that is framed as an all-or-nothing offer. For example, someone might be offered a job that pays $50,000 per year or nothing. The person would likely choose the $50,000 per year job, even if another job was available that paid $49,000 per year.

In 2004 Barry Schwartz developed the concept of Paradox of Choice. This concept shows how people become overwhelmed when they have too many options and how this leads to frustration. The important part about the concept of Paradox of Choice is that it only comes into play after 3 or more choices. The fact is that offering people two or more options is exactly better than offering only one or none at all.

Research has shown when somebody is confronted with Hobson's choice they are more likely to go for ''leave it'' than the "take it" option. But, when there is another option added it feels easier to make a decision and opt for one of the choices shown to us.

When we're facing a ''take it or leave it'' choice, we use all our mental energy from System 2. System 2 is our slower, more deliberative, and more logical mind while System 1 is instinctive and emotional, more about this subject can be found in this article about System 1 and 2 from Daniel Kahneman. Studies have shown that when you get two options instead of one we use the same mental energy but instead of dividing it on "take it" or "leave it" it's now dividing on "take it" or "second option". As you can now understand this makes us more likely to choose one of the two "suggest/active" options instead of leaving it.

• Always show a second option to choose from
• Let both the options lead to the same goal, also known as trivial choice
• No! Do not offer the alternative second option when your visitor/customer is goal-directed (returning visitors?). There might be a counter-effect since it might lead to distraction of the conscious System 2 behavior

Definition of choice

A choice is the act of selecting something from a set of options. The set of options may be limited by factors such as cost, time, or availability. The chooser may make their decision based on personal preferences or objectives.

In some cases, the chooser may not be aware of all the possible options, making their choice more difficult. This is known as the "tyranny of choice" and can lead to anxiety and indecision. To avoid this, it is important to have a clear understanding of what you are looking for before making a choice.

Making choices is a fundamental part of life and can be both difficult and rewarding. The process of choosing can help us to learn about ourselves and what we value. It can also lead to new opportunities and experiences.

Hobson's +1 Choice Effect CRO Example

There are different stages in which your visitors might make choices. Ask yourself this question first, how do visitors enter your website? Use data from Google Analytics (or any other data collection tool you're using) to make sure you're right.

The next question you should ask yourself is, what is the goal on the pages your users are landing on. This could be to buy a product, subscribe to the newsletter, or let them download something.

In this case, we will continue with buying a product on an e-commerce website. The Hobson's +1 Choice Effect is often used for e-commerce websites. Let's take a look at some other examples. The first option is from Amazon.com.

Like you can see there are multiple ways in which you can use this Hobson's +1 Choice Effect. You can either add a compare functionality as an extra option or add to favorites.

What metric to use when experimenting?

The metric often used to measure success is the click-through rate (CTR). CTR is used because you would like to keep your visitors on your website rather than leaving your website. If they go to the next page this experiment can already be seen as successful.

As secondary metric, conversions/transactions is used. It could be the case an extra option is added on for example product pages. Think about save this for later, add to favorites, email this product to myself, share this product with a friend.

Hobson's +1 Choice effect in Conversion Optimization

Implementing Hobson's +1 Choice Effect isn't hard. It's just about adding one extra option your visitors can choose from. The trick with the Hobson's +1 Choice effect is to give them only two options to choose from.

Add extra call-to-action button

Try experimenting by adding a call-to-action to your homepage to see if it increase the click-through rate (CTR). For e-commerce websites, this could be options like Buy bow or Save for later / On wish list.

Favorite button in eCommerce

Give visitors the option to favorite products. The hobson effect applies here because rather than choosing between getting the product or not, they now consider between adding the product to their favorites to continue shopping and buying the product.

Let me know when the item is back in stock

A common issue with eCommerce shops is they have products in multiple colours, sizes, etc. but what if somebody is viewing a product and it's not in their desired colour or size? They will now consider to leave the website and search for the product somewhere else, or continue shopping. You can give your visitors the option to notify them when the item is back in stock again. They are now less likely to go shop this product somewhere else.

Don't add extra option if the choice is logical

When the choice is obvious you don't want to distract your visitors with other options. This is often the case for landing pages. Landingpages are conversion-driven, most of the time with paid advertisement. Only a selected audience gets to see the ads and landing pages. They are likely to buy or convert since it's the audience that you have selected and which is very relevant. In this case, you don't want to give any options, this is only a distraction from the tasks they have to complete and there is a high chance they might leave the website because of this extra option.

Bonus Tips For Experimentation

Down below you can find some ideas for your experiments.

• Add a second option to your call to action buttons (this can be a link, at least it shouldn't look like the main call-to-action. Options like compare and favorite might work well)
• Add the favorite features to your webshop
• Allow visitors to get notified when a product is back in stock
• If possible try to lead both actions to the same end goal, for example to buy a product
• When your customer has only one goal doesn't offer them the second option, you wouldn't want them to be distracted