I recently bought new tires for my car. I knew nothing about tires, and apparently I am not alone. Most people, as I hear, don’t think about tires and just get the least expensive ones. Ever since I bought my used car, I seemed to have picked on the habit of pouring through information before deciding on what to buy. I check consumerreports.org, online user reviews, editorial reviews and discussion forums to make my purchase decision. And, each time I do it (first it was the car, then a GPS, and now tires), I find my interest dwindling as the task is rather cumbersome and difficult. There are too many variables to consider, too many choices to think about and too much conflicting advice (I found tires that consumerreports.org recommended that didn’t do so well on online user ratings elsewhere.)
Consider the variables involved in choosing a tire: there are many different price points, varying warranties, a range of possible sizes that can fit on your car, a choice to be made about all-season vs. summer vs. winter tires, a choice about speed rating and so on. You also have to choose a tire seller, Walmart or Discount Tire or Tire Rack and so on. And comparing between the sellers is a task by itself, as first they sell different brands with all the associated variables, then they have different prices for installing tires, and then like in the case of Tire Rack where you bought the tires online, you needed to check if there was someone local who would install them from you. The price variable itself is made complicated by the fact that different retailers have different installation prices and offer different services for the price: at Discount Tire the “road hazard warranty” is included in the price I found, where as at Walmart it isn’t. And, all the information needed to make your choices is difficult to find, it took several Google searches and several keyword rephrases. Yahoo Answers deserves a kudos for providing several of the leads for finding the information needed.
For someone who knows little about tires, this can be a very overwhelming amount of information to navigate. I spent more than 6 hours over a week trying to find the right tire. And, I am not passionate about tires, not at all. My motivation for spending that much time is to avoid the feeling of guilt later that I didn’t make use of the information that was available. This is of course, the paradox of choice. There are so many choices so I can pick the one that suits me best and be happy, but navigating through my choices and making the decision was more frustrating than happy. There is so much choice as there is even more diversity in people’s needs. Malcolm Gladwell’s wonderful TED talk in which he narrates the story of how there came to be so many kinds of pickles and mustard, illustrates very nicely how recognizing diversity will make us happy:
Recognizing that having choice is a good thing, the issue then is about making the decision easy and happy to make. What made the decision about the tires hard to make for me was I think that I was trying to make my choices as rational as possible. Some people are able to make snap decisions, in which cases they are probably guided by emotion: A liking for a brand, the visceral appeal of a product. And emotional guidance helps reduce choices, if I had a preference for Walmart or Discount Tire, it would have saved me the trouble of comparing those two, If I had a strong trust in consumer reports, I wouldn’t have looked at other sources.
In spite of my best efforts to make my choice as rational as possible, the emotional element was unavoidable. I got free air checks at the local Discount Tire store several times, and they seemed like nice people. That did sway my decision and I did buy my tires at Discount Tire. I got the Yokohama YK520 based on user reviews and ratings on the Discount Tire website itself. Apart from using the touch point of air checks in the real world to create a good impression, Disount Tire also scores by providing me most of the information I need on their website itself. By reducing the amount of searching I have to do elsewhere, they communicate that they understand my needs.
What is missing though is the ability to compare with what the competition is offering, how are the prices different from other retailers, how do the brands of tires offered compare with others that aren’t. Providing that information though is only possible if you have the best, you wouldn’t want comparisons on your website showing your inferiority. Having that information further reduces my need to go elsewhere, and also communicates the confidence the company has in its offerings, which is a good thing for companies to aspire to. Honda’s website does just that by allowing you to compare their vehicles with competitors on their website itself.
Thus, one way to improve the experience is to provide all the information in one place, anticipating people’s information needs. Another way is to provide guidance along the way of making the decision. If there was so much choice to suit so many needs, why can’t there be help guiding me to make my choice based on my particular needs? Why can’t tire websites ask me about my driving style, my warranty needs, driving conditions etc. and guide me through to the decision? One example I saw recently of such an interaction is on Capital One’s Credit Card Lab, they help me navigate the many credit card options they have by asking me about my credit rating, whether I need rewards for using the card, whether I am willing to pay an annual fee etc. The dynamic display of information, that updates the page with available options once a choice is made, without a page refresh, makes me quickly compare the effects of my choices and understand the information space.
