Ease of Use = Sales Pitch
Miranda Capra / Usability / Web & SoftwareLast week I needed to create a special website for a client project. The specific website is unimportant, but it’s a service that several companies offer – you create an account and configure the site, and they host it. I looked into two different companies for this web service…
Company A: I went to their website, looked up pricing information, signed up for a trial account, created the site and a custom URL for it, skinned the site, and sent it around to my boss and project team for comments.
Time spent: 30 minutes
Experience: awesome!
Company B: I floundered around the website looking for information. I signed up for a trial and then couldn’t figure out how to make a demo site. I gave up completely until a sales guy called me out of the blue and convinced me to stick with it. He set up an appointment with sales rep #2 . She called me the next day, a very nice woman. “I’m sorry you couldn’t figure out how to set up a trial site, we get that all the time.” (I’m thinking, that’s a big sign that your website has serious usability issues.) “The service you want is disabled in the trial version.” (Then why did the site push me to sign up for a trial?) “I also want to make sure you know that there’s an extra monthly fee for this particular service.” (When was the site going to mention that?) “Is there a feature that is important to you that we might offer? Oh, I don’t know if we have that feature, I’ll have to get back to you. Would you like me to have an engineer call you to discuss more details of the product?” (No, thanks, I’ve spent enough time already.)
Time spent: 2 hours
Experience: bad, and no trial site to show for it
We’re going with Company A because the service was so easy and pleasant to use. I don’t actually even know if it has fewer features, I never got enough information about Company B’s service to tell. Company A didn’t need to call me as soon as I signed up for a trial account – the process was easy enough that I could do it myself.
The moral of the story is that that first interaction with a potential customer is the most important – if they get turned off immediately, they’re gone and with a competitor, and then it’s much harder to get them back. Maybe Company B should spend more money on making their website and software easier to use, so that they won’t have to spend money on all those personal phone calls to turn visitors into customers.
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