Let’s pretend you sell gumballs from the best designed gumball machines in the industry. You sell these gumballs to legions of gumball loving folk. The machines you sell from are easy for your customers to use and understand, they even automatically bill the proper customer whenever they turn the knobby thingy to ‘buy’ a gumball. Everything from the plastic glass that let’s us gander and drool over the gumballs, to the shape, to the color of the machines has been tested and proven to maximize ‘usability’. Congrats! You have managed to build the near flawless ‘Gumball Machine”. Your machine is scoring a 97% on the Future Now ‘usability’ scale. Remember our definition of ‘usability’?

Usability- The ability to implement effectively the body of knowledge concerning the human-computer interface in order to remove any obstacles impeding the experience and process of online interactions.

Every reasonable obstacle has been removed. Now that’s tough…but pretend you’ve done it…

Customers are lining up, finding the gumballs they want, buying the gumballs, gaggles are even sprinting back and buying more gumballs. Everything is a success, but you have yet to reach your business objective, you need to sell even more gumballs. You now have a choice.

1) You can pay for more traffic.
2) You can sell more gumballs to your existing traffic.

Which is the wiser?

Apple iTunes converts more existing traffic by shamelessly adhering to a principle called momentum. (This is the second more ‘Complicated’ GOOD thing I alluded to yesterday.) About every page in the iTunes music store passes the A.I.D.A.S test, but to get even more specific , iTunes really excels in the D category… they stimulate Desire.

Do a search to find ONE song…Yeah! by Usher, and instantly you’re presented at least 5 relevant options that entice you to go beyond buying and sampling just that one song.

Let’s just say you don’t really know what you are looking for, that you just want to find something new to add to your music collection. Now you’re in deep trouble. Not only is it easy to find new music in a variety of new ways, it almost addictive.

You can browse and sample music in no less than 15 ways. From charts that feature today’s most downloaded songs to decades of Billboard Charts. You can sample what Celebrities listen to, even what the legions of iTunes users recommend in the form of iMixes that we submit and share right from the iTunes jukebox. You can even browse what your local radio stations are playing.

Apple has done all the tough work for you by conjuring up more and more ways to lure you into sampling unfamiliar and forgotten music. I cannot neglect to mention how easy it is to find the songs you already know you want. This leaves you with nothing left to do but tend to your own stimulated desires.

Ohhh…and don’t forget how easy it is to just click any one of these songs your sampling and own it within seconds.

All of these ‘elements’ create mounds of momentum and help to stimulate desire, the end result, you really do feel like a kid in a music store. (And that can’t be good for you wallet.)

Are you stimulating desire on your website, or are you just giving people data? Guess which sells more gumballs?

As of this writing Apple has sold exactly 94,753,261 ‘gumballs.’