#mycustomizer

We’re starting a new series of articles called “Lessons in Mass Customization” where we'll share some insights on mass customization.

For the first one in the series I thought I would talk about choice offering in customizers. Many people come to us with big ideas; they want to do custom shirts and offer 200 different fabrics and 100 button colors. We always advise against offering that many choices, and we often get the same reactions:

- But I have the possibility! Why not offer everything? Isn’t the whole point of mass customization to offer people the opportunity to design exactly what they want? 

Yes. But no. Having the possibility to offer 200 different fabrics doesn’t mean you should do it. And yes, mass customization is all about giving people exactly what they want, but the truth is, people don’t know what they want. They need to be guided through the design experience, and they need to pick from a pre-defined set of options.

We make hundreds of decisions everyday and customizing a product might quickly go from a pleasant experience to an overwhelming one if there are too many choices to make. Sheena Iyengar is a Professor at the Columbia Business School and author of The Art of Choosing. She brilliantly explains how to help consumers make choices using four basic strategies :

1. Cut – Less is more Only offer the most important options. We always tell our clients to resist the temptation of offering too many options. 

2. Concretize – Make it vivid A great product visualization is crucial. The more realistic the product is, the easier it is for the customer to make a decision. 

3. Categorize – More categories, fewer choices Customers can handle more choices if they are grouped into meaningful categories. It’s important to guide them within a directed user experience flow.

4. Condition – Learning how to choose  Move from easy choices to more complex ones. For example, choosing a shoe size is much easier than choosing colors. Once the customer has made 2 or 3 simple choices, he’s more willing to make a difficult one.

Another strategy that works very well is to offer many design starting points. This way, the customer can start from a predefined design or color scheme he likes, tweak 2 or 3 things and buy the product. This is much easier than starting from a blank product.

-But if I offer fewer choices, won’t the designs all look the same?

No. Let’s do some simple math to calculate how many different possibilities you could get out of a custom product using live examples.  

Take Luna sandals. They’re offering custom colors on their adventure sandals: 2 customizable zones, and 9 color options for each zone. There are 81 different combinations possible. Let’s say next season they decide to add 3 new colors to their offering for a total of 12. There are now 144 possibilities, and if they decide to add a 3rd customizable zone, like different 3 different soles, they would now have 432 different combinations possible!

Let’s look at more complex one. This sneaker from Undandy has 11 different customizable zones. For the 7 zones on the shoes you have 54 different leather choices, and then you can choose between 15 colors for your lace rings, laces and stitching. And then you can choose between 2 colors for the sole. How many possible combinations are there? 9 quadrillion. Yep, that’s 9 million billion. Does your brain hurt? Mine does.

So what’s the right amount of choices to offer? It will be different for everyone. We usually recommend to start with 10-15 choices, and see how people are using your configurator until you find your sweet spot. You can always change your colors or patterns every season or offer “limited time only” options. Listen to your customers and let them show you exactly what they want, that’s the whole point of mass customization!

Selling custom product online is becoming more and more popular. All the big brands are doing it. Having a product customizer with visualization is an awesome tool to get customers engaged in the buying funnel. They get to design their own perfect product and get an idea of what it will look like. Getting the right customizer or product configurator is a must, but taking advantage of all it’s functionalities is where you can make a huge difference by creating fun campaigns to boost your sales and your brand.

Here are 3 easy ways to do it:

1. Host a social sharing contest

Source: Cupio Custom Apparel

Using the built-in social media sharing, create a social contest to offer your customers the chance to win the custom product they designed. Create a simple set of rules asking users to design their product, share them on social media with a specific hashtag, like your page and tag a friend.

It’s an easy way to gain more followers and spread the word about your business!

2. Use Starting Points

Source: Undandy Custom Shoes

As architect Mies van der Rohe said: “Less is more”. Creating the perfect pair of shoes or sunglasses is great, but it can get confusing if there are too many options available. Your customers get lost in a sea of options and they never reach the checkout.

Keep it simple by creating “starting points” for your customers to choose. Create a simple design, and give your customers the option to start by customizing the design or buy them as is. This will give them the freedom to make any changes they like to an existing product while speeding up the design process.

3. Save Designs

Source: Cupio Custom Apparel

When your customers are creating their dream custom product, they might want a second opinion from a friend before actually making the purchase, or maybe they want to sleep on it to make sure they’ve made the right design choices. It can be frustrating to start over when they’ve spent the time to make it right.

With a built-in save functionality, your customers can log in and come back to their designs whenever they want. It is also a great opportunity for you as a seller to sign them up to receive email offers. If you see that some designs have been saved but not purchased, you can send them an email with a discount code as an incentive to complete their purchase.