What Is Choice Paralysis?
Is it possible to have too many choices? Most people would say no, the more choices the better; but it’s not true. Give someone too many choices and they are very likely to choose nothing. Think about it for one second, there has probably been countless times in your life where you were indecisive because of too much choice, God knows I have. I am now seeing this happen on countless websites with their social media sharing features.

Examples of Choice Paralysis
Imagine you find this amazing video that you have to share your friends across one of your social networks. You hit the share function on the site, usually below the video, and the image below pops up:

SHARING OVERLOAD. With so many choices people get intimidated, overwhelmed and it then becomes to much of a hassle to share so they abandon their efforts (and your site). Why have so many choices when we all know that there is an 80/20 rule with social media. 80% of what everyone does when sharing content happens on less then 20% of the sites out there. By finding the top 2 or 3 most commonly used share buttons and focusing on those you will cut down on abandonment by 85% or more.

Think of McDonald’s and why that franchise became so successful. No matter where people went they found a familiar and consistent place to eat and they knew what they were getting when they went there. Same thing goes with social media. People are used to one or two sites they frequent and that’s it. Too many choices equals no choice. Too many sites make the error by trying to cater to everyone and every possible choice out there and in the process they end up catering to no one.

YouTube is even guilty of over-sharing. Although they give you a few more share buttons than they should to choose from as you see below, they put the most used buttons in the front so people don’t get too overwhelmed. I mean who uses Myspace anymore…I mean really? 

Best Practice
This part is simple, less is more. Choose the 2 or 3 most commonly used share buttons on your site and that’s it (usually facebook, twitter and email). It’s a proven fact that when you give people too much choice they don’t choose at all. Stay laser focused on this best practice and other consumer experience best practices and you will end up winning in the long run.