In the Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? book doctor Susan Weinschenk explains our behavior as application users by neuro-marketing concepts, which are a mix of psychology and user experience concepts.

One of the most important topics to consider in an application is the number of choices available to users. In our perception, we feel more connected to an application if we find plenty of choices to select from. But this is not true, in fact is exactly the opposite. When we are in front of a long list of choices our brain freezes and we are not able to make a decision.

On the same time, having more choices available doesn’t help us make better decisions, it’s just our perception which plays an important role in thinking like this.

The danger of being in a situation with too many choices is that we don’t make a choice at all, which translates to not using the application, not buying a product, and so on.

There is a positive side of having lots of choices available though, users attention will be grabbed much faster.

Multiple studies confirm that a lower number of choices increases the chances to have a better conversion rate (from users to buyers, from users rarely accessing an application to users accessing it on a regular basis).

So, next time you decide to add functionality to your application keep in mind the total number of choices available.