Once a year, on October 31st, Canadians take a break from discussing the weather to ask each other how many trick-or-treaters each is expecting that evening. And a meeting I was in yesterday didn’t disappoint.
One person mentioned her house regularly “gets” 400+ trick-or-treaters while her neighbour only answers the door to 250 or so (a whopping 37.5% reduction, etc.). The meeting quickly concurred, with each attendee recounting their own similar experience of being on one side or the other of this neighbourly divide. The consensus explanation reached was simple: All other things being equal, the more stairs you have, the less trick-or-treaters you get.
Really? A set of stairs is going to keep a 10-yr old kid on a sugar high away from a fistfull of Wunderbars? While I’m not in a rush to testify to the statistical validity of this little non-experiment, I’ll admit I wouldn’t be surprised.
It has been my experience that it is really easy for marketers to underestimate the impact of introducing even the smallest barrier between someone and a desired action.
It means that one extra click people have to make might cost you more conversions than first thought. And getting people to enter a contest by submitting a video is tougher than you might think.
Every time you’re thinking through a new marketing initiative, campaign idea, or website, there are inevitably points along the way where you identify what you’re asking of the customer/prospect/visitor/user/etc. Making things easier can be a great place to start.
If you want me to participate, you gotta make it easy.