I just purchased a new laptop via Dell Canada, and was amazed and frustrated by how many combinations and permutations of laptop configurations are available, within a single model of a single line. This got me thinking about how to simplify ecommerce for your small and local businesses.

I must have had about 20 false starts in ordering a computer, which almost had me buy a laptop somewhere else. The problem? You can take a single model (I was looking at the Studio 15, the Inspiron 17 or the Studio XPS16 models), and come up with a seemingly unlimited number of possible configurations. You can even find different “specials” which come with pre-configured options; but once you know what you want and are just looking for the best price, it all comes unravelled.

For example, you can find a laptop on a $300 sale, but it might contain a few features you really don’t want to pay for. Or you can find the same laptop on a $200 sale with a few less features, but you need to pay a little bit to add the missing features you want. Or you can also find the same laptop on a $70 sale but magically by the time you add all the features you want, it’s actually less expensive than the first $300 sale offer. It takes a lot of time to work through the different combinations to find just the features you want for the best possible price.

Now while this might work for Dell due to its strong brand name and good pricing, most small businesses need to eliminate as many barriers to a successful ecommerce site as possible – you can’t afford to risk losing a customer because the purchasing process is too confusing or overwhelming. The solution is to identify the smallest number of products and product combinations that have the highest value to your customer, present those quickly and simply, and move them through the checkout painlessly.

So how did my Dell experience end? I bought a Studio 15 laptop over the phone which saved me about $100 and cost Dell an hour’s worth of sales time. More importantly for Dell, had they offered less combinations and permutations, my purchase would have netted them $100 more revenue and been able to service another customer.