One homepage, one ask
Four calls to action feel helpful. To a buyer they feel like homework. Here is what the research says, including the part most marketers leave out.
By SIGNALMINDSOpen your homepage and count the buttons above the fold. Book a demo. Contact sales. Start a trial. Download the guide. Subscribe. Each one was added for a good reason, by someone trying to help.
Together they ask a stranger to make a decision before they have decided anything.
The famous jam study, and what came after
In 2000, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper set up a tasting table in a grocery store. Sometimes it offered 24 jams, sometimes 6. The big table drew more people: about 60% of shoppers stopped, against 40% at the small one. But only about 3% of those who stopped at the big table bought jam. At the small table it was about 30%.
That study is quoted everywhere. Fewer people quote what happened next. When Benjamin Scheibehenne and colleagues pooled 50 experiments in 2010, the average effect of more choice was close to zero. Sometimes more options hurt, often they did not.
So the useful question is not "how many options?" It is "when do options hurt?" Later meta-analyses by Blakeley McShane and Ulf Böckenholt pointed to four conditions: the options are hard to compare, the decision is difficult, the person is unsure what they want, and they are trying to make a firm choice.
Your homepage hits all four
A first-time visitor to a B2B site does not know your product, is not sure what they need, and is weighing a choice that could cost them. A row of similar-looking buttons is exactly the hard-to-compare set where choice starts to hurt.
It matches what sales research finds too. In studying millions of sales calls, Matt Dixon and Ted McKenna found that sellers win more stuck deals when they give one clear recommendation and limit how much more the buyer has to explore.
A homepage is your first recommendation. If it cannot pick one next step, the buyer has to.
What one ask looks like
- One main button per page. The same action, in the same words, everywhere it appears.
- Everything else becomes a quiet link. Pricing, resources and log in still exist. They just stop competing.
- The button says what happens next. "Book a 20-minute call" beats "Submit" or "Learn more".
- The ask fits the moment. A first visit gets a small step. A pricing page can ask for more.
How ORENIUS uses this
Brand Read counts the different actions your homepage asks for and flags it when there are too many. Then it writes the fix: which one to keep, which to demote, and the new button text in your voice.