Hesitation is a natural step in the customer’s journey. After all, we want to make sure a product or service is the right one for us.
But what lies behind this? In this post, we’ll go over what happens in your customer’s mind when looking at your service or ecommerce website.
Hesitation leads to abandonment rates on a website, through shopping cart abandonment or even before, by leaving the website due to an overwhelming and “left-alone” environment. The numbers are high, with the Baymard Institute showing that about 70% of online journeys end up abandoned in 2023. In fact, considering the average conversion rate of 2-4%, you can say that 98% of potential customers abandon online shops.
That’s why it’s important to know what components on your website influence the decision-making process.
There are some differences between the online and offline buying experiences, and we’ll compare the two with some examples. Online, we have to find alternatives to actions that naturally only happen in real life. For example, multiple sources show that since users cannot examine products physically, they are hesitant to purchase online.
Our focus will be on the presentation of information about your services and products. I already hinted at this in my previous post on general website frictions. So by the end of this blog post, you’ll understand where user hesitation comes from and what to look out for by zooming into different parts of your website.
Our first “zoom-in” will be on lists. Catalogues, search result pages and comparison tables are a standard way to present to the user a complete overview of the capabilities you provide. People are used to browsing through options online, much like they do on Google.
If we make the comparison to in-person shops, you can explore by walking around. When in need of help, a salesperson can guide you through the options given your situation.
As in physical stores, a wide range of options is appealing at first. A large catalogue can signal expertise and increase the chance that shoppers find something relevant. To the businessman as well, more options allow you to cater to more different customers.
And customers do want to choose; specifically limiting choices gives off the wrong feeling. This happens on multiple fronts, of which single-choice aversion might be the immediate argument against not giving options. Users want alternatives and otherwise go elsewhere for more options.
However, even with enough information, simply listing all products available doesn’t work. With too many options available, without proper guidance, it becomes harder to know which item is right. Especially online: there isn’t always a real person available to help, and you aren’t able to compare things physically. And while options like customer chatbots, operated by AI, or real personnel are available, for smaller businesses, the latter is especially costly.
So what’s left? The customer enters the never-ending maze of specialized lotions and creams. For you, it might be easy to grasp. But for the customer, this feels overwhelming.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz stirred up the community, continuing on the research of Sheena Iyengar. What we’re encountering here is a “paradox of choice”. It’s not just “the more options available, the better our decision”, but also “the more options available, the less likely we are to decide at all”.
The user experiences decision paralysis. Not knowing what to do, not knowing enough about your services, the user becomes lost in a web of quite a lot of information. Thoughts of insecurity show up. Where do I start? Which of these many products should I choose to compare? Can I even compare them all at once?
This also connects to Hick’s Law, as mentioned in our previous post. The more options available, the longer it takes for a user to make a decision. People have limited mental energy, and comparing between options or even choosing between a list of options becomes tiring at last. This essentially hints to a saturation in the user’s mind, where, at some point, overanalyzing and overthinking causes the user to stall purely out of relief.
These micro-moments happen when deciding between a list of products or services. And not only for a list, but also for individual product assessment. Indeed, beyond the product listing, we can zoom in further and go to the product display page.
The user has decided to select one of your services or products. Perhaps it’s the first one listed in the search results.
Each difference in a customer gives a new perspective on what information to provide. But here you should also take into account the balance between too little and too much information. Too little or inadequate information, and customers abandon your website. This includes both information displayed as text and attached visual elements like videos and images.
With too much information, we encounter something similar to decision paralysis: information overload. The more information you display to the user, the more overwhelmed and stressed they become, as found in a review and empirical study by Kusi et al.
Furthermore, the more niche or specialized your service becomes, the more likely it is that users become confused about which product is best or what you’re offering in the first place. We can build on the example of the cosmetics store: specifics like “hypoallergenic” are not clear to everyone; having to include it in a comparison increases the cognitive effort that a customer has to make.
Why is it that more options or more information lead to no choice in the end? It lies in how users deal with overwhelming emotions.
Perhaps in a job setting, you’re somewhat pushed to push through it and give it your best. But when it comes to leisure, the direction goes to comfort.
The foundation in psychology has been around for a while. Christopher J Anderson concluded from a plethora of research papers in 2003 that, indeed, decision avoidance kicks in: no choice at last, purely for convenience and relief.
Making a decision takes effort. This includes, before deciding to buy a product, choosing what to buy in the first place. Every second of hesitation is a second in which a potential customer might walk away.
Not knowing whether the choice between a list of products or a specific product is right enough, allows a fear of regret to kick in. The choice suddenly becomes increasingly risky the more information is collected. As mentioned before, a lack of guidance can be blamed for this as well. The result is a lack of confidence, and something coined as ambiguity aversion: avoiding unknown risks. Perhaps best seen when comparing real-life fashion shops with online stores: you know it best when you try it on.
And it happens more in smaller businesses, as most effort is already spent on bigger, more well-known websites, and the user is already overwhelmed or exhausted by the search. Apart from the mentioned specialized services, small businesses are already penalized. It perhaps adds to the trust that businesses need to earn; you want the experience to be as smooth as possible: hesitation and other negative emotions work against it.
I want to include the extension beyond ecommerce in this blog post. Perhaps you’ve already noticed that I explicitly mention product and service pages.
The reason is that terms like decision paralysis and information overload also matter outside the ecommerce sphere. Going to the cosmetics example again, we can easily compare ecommerce with real-life shops. Examples using lotions are directly linked to lotions sold online.
But for services, the gap between what you offer and what the customer immediately understands is often larger. Say your core business is to provide consultancy in various fields. Or perhaps you’re selling a vast software suite for your complete field. These can still be seen as products in a broader sense. But they are less tangible to your potential customers: the choice is harder to make because you can’t “touch” it. At first glance, it is harder to judge whether an abstract solution is the right fit.
For example, while browsing Netflix after finishing a good series, I often hesitate to choose a recommendation because I’m unsure why it would provide the same experience as the one I just watched. Even when knowing from past experience that I’d likely enjoy it, I usually end up not selecting anything at all.
Understanding online customer hesitation is a crucial point in optimizing the complete customer journey. While hesitation is natural, you can minimize it by inspecting the way you show information on your website.
Choice is a double-edged sword. Whether in ecommerce or showing services and products in an algorithmic manner, the paradox of choice shows that more doesn’t mean better.
The best response is to find the right balance between too much and too little information. This is also mentioned by Schwartz himself in a response to arguments against his. It’s not as black and white as it might seem. It isn’t a “law” in a direct sense, and finding this “sweet spot” is tricky.
Furthermore, when designing your customer pages, take inspiration from real-life scenarios like in-person stores. Emerging technologies make something like the in-person sales clerk much more realizable. And in 2026, shoppers crave such personalized experiences. Features like this and highlighted products help minimize the amount of information shown by catering directly to the user’s needs. This way, the user becomes less overwhelmed and can easily make a decision.