The same bread, two paths, different conversion
A person walks to the store, and every step is an investment they don’t want to lose. Online, the path to a purchase runs through search results, rewritten queries and product grids, and on every screen some people drop off.
“Buy bread” is a query. People buy a feeling.
People type short queries into a search bar. In the logs of the Excite search engine (1997), a query averaged 2.21 words, and 62% of queries had one or two [5]. Behind the words “buy bread” is something else: warm sourdough, a crackling crust, salted butter melting in.
Desire is an image
According to the theory of desire, people imagine in advance the sensations of what they want. These images bring momentary pleasure and at the same time sharpen the sense of lacking it [6]. Consumption has sensory, emotional and imaginative sides, not only the function of the thing [7] [8].
Kavanagh et al., 2005 · Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982A decision starts with anticipation
Before a purchase decision, a liked product activates the nucleus accumbens, linked to anticipated pleasure, and an excessive price activates regions linked to unpleasantness. Activity in these regions predicted purchases better than the participants’ own answers [9]. Dopamine neurons signal the anticipation of reward [10].
Knutson et al., 2007 · Schultz et al., 1997A car is more than getting from A to B
A car serves not only a practical function but also symbolic and emotional ones. For people who drive to work, car use is more strongly tied to symbolic and emotional motives than to practical ones [11]. Possessions are a notable part of who people think they are [12].
Steg, 2005 · Belk, 1988So the path to a purchase is a path to a feeling. On the street, every step brings the person physically closer to it. Online, search results, rewritten queries and product grids stand between them and that feeling.
The street accumulates investment. The screen filters people out.
Plug in your own numbers
What we know about search. Attention concentrates on the first two results, falls quickly after that, and drops off after the tenth result, at the page boundary [13]. People scan results from top to bottom and leave as soon as they see a suitable link [14]. To find what they need, people usually rewrite the query several times: in the study, 1.9–2.2 queries per question on average [13].
The attention budget
Attention is limited, and every step spends part of it. Back in 1971, Herbert Simon wrote that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention [57].
People scan in an F
On text pages the eye moves in two stripes across the top, then down the left edge. Eyetracking of 232 people showed this [58]. A 2017 follow-up confirmed the pattern and found others [59].
First impression
Within 50 milliseconds people already judge whether they like a page, and that judgment matches the one made after 500 ms [60].
Screen first
People quickly screen a page before they read it. If it fails the screening, they leave [61].
Why people on foot reach the purchase and people at a screen leave
Nobody wants to lose what they invested
People tend to continue an endeavor once they have invested money, effort or time in it [15]. Coming back empty-handed means admitting it was all for nothing. Losses also feel stronger than equal gains [16].
Arkes & Blumer, 1985 · Kahneman & Tversky, 1979Completed labor raises value
People value what they made themselves more highly, but only if they finished it [17]. The classic hypothesis “the harder the initiation, the more you like it” [18] did not hold up in a replication [19].
Norton et al., 2012 · Aronson & Mills, 1959 · Kamau, 2013At a screen, people search faster, not longer
People adapt their search to get as much valuable information as possible per unit of time, and judge a page’s value by the nearest cues [20]. If the cues promise less than other links, it is easier to move on to another one.
Pirolli & Card, 1999One product’s chance is split across the whole grid
If a page shows 6–8 similar items and all are equally attractive, a given one gets roughly 1/6–1/8 of the people who reached the page. That is arithmetic, not a measurement. The measurement comes from the famous jam experiment: in an upscale grocery store, with a choice of 6 flavors about 30% of people who approached the display bought a jar; with 24, about 3% [21].
A single product on a page does not get 100%. When there is only one option, people want to keep looking, and a product was chosen more often when alternatives stood next to it than when it stood alone [22]. People judge a price not on its own but against an internal reference point built from past purchases and the setting in which they buy [23]. So the comparison is not only with what is on the page, but also with what they have seen before and remember.
Three sizes on the menu, but a choice of two
Small
$6.99The low price point.
Medium bucket
$8.49Just $1.50 less than the large. Its job is to make the large an obvious deal.
Large bucket
$9.99+$1.50 for the large bucket.
Adding an option that is clearly worse than one of the existing ones raises the probability of choosing the option it stands next to. Classical choice theory says this should not happen, but experiments observe it [24]. Prices are illustrative, not a measurement.
A specific query: fewer clicks, more purchases
The more specific the query, the fewer people click on it, but the more often those who click buy. This was shown by a field experiment with search advertising [25] and by data from a Chinese marketplace [26]. “Buy sourdough bread $6” is more specific than “buy bread”.
| Query | Clicks | Purchase conversion | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| “buy bread” broad query | more | lower | Popular keywords bring more clicks but lower conversion [26]. |
| “buy sourdough bread $6” specific query | fewer | higher | Specific keywords bring higher conversion and lower click-through [25] [26]. |
| “sourdough recipe” informational query | some | not the goal of the query | Queries are informational (to learn), navigational (to reach a site) and transactional (to take an action, such as buying) [27]. |
Two more results from the same line of research [28]. The store name in the query raised conversion by 50.6%, and the product’s brand name lowered it by 44.2%. The higher the landing page quality (relevance, transparency, ease of navigation), the higher the conversion: by 22.5% as the score rises from 1 to 10. This is a correlation, not an experiment.
The query, the ad and the page say the same thing
The scheme is assembled from confirmed parts: a specific query [25] [26], a relevant landing page [28] and a small choice instead of a large grid [21]. Two options, not one: a single option pushes people to keep looking [22]. It resembles the popcorn menu, but without a decoy: both main options are real.
Marketplaces have retention mechanics, a regular store does not
Points and a progress bar
Members of a café loyalty program bought coffee more often the closer they were to a free cup [29]. Artificial “head-start progress” toward a goal raised the chance of reaching it [30].
Kivetz et al., 2006 · Nunes & Drèze, 2006Loyalty programs
An online grocer’s loyalty program increased annual purchases for a significant share of customers [31]. The effect depends on the customer: those who already bought a lot did not change, while the rest gradually bought more and grew more loyal [32].
Lewis, 2004 · Liu, 2007Paid membership
After signing up for a membership on a large Korean platform, shoppers spent more there and bought more often, and spent less on competitors’ platforms [33]. A membership ties the shopper to one platform.
Yi & Lee, 2025A regular online store has none of these mechanics. Of what is confirmed, it is left with specific queries, a relevant landing page and a small choice.
A status brand gets defended, “slightly above average” gets judged harder
Buys status and distinction
Defends the brand even when it fails, because a blow to the brand feels like a blow to oneself. The purchase sets the buyer apart from those who cannot afford it.Buys something a bit pricier than usual
A price that is high for them raises expectations, and they rate it more harshly in a review.Defended even when it fails
People with a strong “the brand is me” connection take negative information about the brand as a personal failure and keep a good opinion of the brand to protect themselves [34].
Cheng, White & Chaplin, 2012Standing apart from those who cannot buy
Demand for some goods grows precisely because they cost more [35]. Wealthy people with a high need for status wear loud logos to show the less well-off that they are “not one of them” [36]. Insiders choose subtle signals to stand apart from the mass market [37]. When a brand is counterfeited, owners of genuine items abandon the brand, stress that they have worn it for a long time, or hide the logo [38].
Leibenstein, 1950 · Han et al., 2010 · Berger & Ward, 2010 · Commuri, 2009Price changes the experience, even with no difference
The same wine with a higher price tag seemed tastier, and it showed up on fMRI [39]. An energy drink bought at a discount had a smaller real effect [40]. Yet across 6,000 blind tastings, the link between a wine’s price and its rating was small and negative [41].
Plassmann et al., 2008 · Shiv et al., 2005 · Goldstein et al., 2008People tend to share the good about their own experience and retell the bad about others’, because they want to look better in others’ eyes [42]. But in written reviews of the mid-plus segment, more expensive means stricter. Across 44,000 guest reviews from one European hotel chain: the more a guest paid, the lower the rating, both for “value for money” and for quality [43]. Stars in camera reviews reflect “value for money” more than quality [44]. Price affects the rating most when people are unsure about quality [45].
They dropped in-person viewings, and sales fell to zero
A trip to every apartment
Every viewing costs the client’s time and the agent’s time. After a few trips, the client agreed to one of the options.You can browse forever
Nothing to invest, nothing to win back, nobody else’s time spent. Sales: zero.Three hidden motives that lead to a deal
1. Break even
After losses, options that offer a chance to break even are especially attractive [46]. The days spent on trips are a loss, and buying lets the client “win it back”.
Thaler & Johnson, 19902. Not be a fool
People tend to continue an endeavor once they have invested money, effort or time in it [15]. For time this effect is weaker than for money, and it appears when time is accounted for like money [47]. In a 2023 replication the first difference held up more weakly, and in the second experiment the effect was found for both time and money [48].
Arkes & Blumer, 1985 · Soman, 2001 · Petrov et al., 20233. Be fair to the agent
The agent drove the client around and showed the places; that is a favor. In an experiment, a small favor increased willingness to comply with a later request, and the link was explained by the pressure of the reciprocity norm, not by liking [49].
Regan, 1971Online viewing switches off all three motives at once: there are no losses to win back, no investment to justify, and no one else’s time to feel awkward about.
What this means for a regular online store
- 01Every extra step lowers conversion. Attention in search results concentrates at the top, queries get rewritten several times, and the shares of people who pass each step multiply.
- 02Bid on specific keywords. They get fewer clicks but higher conversion. Informational queries (“bread recipe”) bring people who want to learn, not buy.
- 03The landing page must answer the query. The more relevant and clear it is, the higher the conversion.
- 04A small choice instead of a grid of dozens of items, especially when the shopper wants to buy quickly and without deliberation.
- 05Retention mechanics work. Points, progress bars and memberships raise purchase frequency on marketplaces, and you can use them in your own store.
- 06Customer effort is not only a barrier. Removing the effort can also remove the motive to see it through. Before “simplifying to zero”, test it on a share of customers.
- 07Test on your own traffic. Some mechanics are confirmed with caveats, and the model numbers on this page are an example.
What did not hold up
“Too much choice.” The jam experiment does not always replicate: a meta-analysis of 63 conditions from 50 experiments found an average effect of about zero [53]. A later meta-analysis showed the effect exists when the choice is complex, the task is difficult, the person is unsure of their preferences and wants to spend minimal effort [54]. Buying bread online fits the last condition.
“Add-ons and recommendations distract from buying.” There is data, but about a different situation. Recommendations of matching products reduced cart abandonment [55], and in an A/B test optimizing on-page recommendations raised the purchase rate by 7.34% [56]. That is a person who is choosing and comparing. For a targeted purchase, when they came for one loaf of bread, there are no such measurements.
Research papers
Each source was checked against its abstract or full text: the paper really says what this page cites it for.
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