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Rick Henkin Karl Kasca
In
This Issue:
- Tip
of the Week - A True Tale of a Horrible Website Experience
- TheSolutionMovie.com
- Have a topic idea?
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Tip of the Week- A True Tale of a Horrible Website Experience
I love when websites are simple, easy to figure out and to the point. Don't you?
I
recently took my family on a pretty thrilling white water river rafting
trip (Class III-Class IV rapids) on the Merced River here in
California.
Naturally, they had a photography company standing at
various points downstream taking photos of the rafters for sale later.
I
went to their website, found the photos of the company we went rafting
with and began looking at them, all 264 photos.
Unless you recognized
an article of clothing or could see a face, there was no way to tell
which was the raft we were in, especially as the churning water covered
us up most of the time. Even though each photo was individually
numbered, you could only purchase all images of 1 rapid, all images of
2 rapids or all images of all rapids.
I thought I'd better email
them and let them know that I didn't understand how they were going to
determine which raft was the one my family was on. I emailed on
Monday, heard nothing and called them on Wednesday. At this point, I'm
wondering about customer service and if they really care.
Finally,
on Friday, I received an email saying that they would sort out the
photos. They apologized for the delay but they didn't have Internet or
telephone access in the mountains.
That's understandable, but
all they had to do was to put a few sentences of explanation on their
site to let their customers know that it would be a few days before
they could respond. At least we would know that they still cared about
us.
And they offered me a 10% discount if I purchased all the
photos from the 2 boats my family was spread out over. That sounded
great but why not show that on the website to encourage more sales?
I called and emailed suggesting things that they could do to make their site a better experience for their customers.
I
then went to place my order. It did not reflect my 10% discount. On top of
that, the image on their site depicting where the CID code was an
American Express card. I took out my AmEx card only to find out they
only accept Visa and M/C. Why show the AmEx card?
I'm pretty
upset at this point. I know that they're the only game in town
regarding these photos, but that's no excuse for not looking at their
website from their user's point of view.
I made another telephone call
and sent another email.
Finally, a week and a half after my
1st phone call, someone called me back. They appreciated my suggestions
(which included bringing in 3 people from the outside that don't know
the site, and observe them trying to make a purchase).
The person explained
that even though I had received a sales order receipt from the website,
my card hadn't really been charged and they would take care of the
10% discount when they manually charged the card.
I said, "You guys
understand your website inside and out, but you've got to look at it
from your customer's point of view." Know what he said? He said, "I
don't understand it either. It's just a shopping cart service we're
using, we didn't create it."
The Point of All This?
Aside
from the fact that this company is beyond lame, don't assume that your
visitors understand your website just because you do. Do a quick
usability test. Hire 3-5 people from the outside and give them a task
to perform on your site. See how they do.
We spend all of this time,
effort and money to get them to our site, why risk losing them once
they're there?
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Best
Wishes,
Rick Henkin and Karl Kasca
IncreaseOnlineProfits.comsm
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