Conversion rates, user satisfaction, and retention improve when you deliver a consistent user interface – one in which you tell customers something that is consistent with what you actually do. The issue arose with a client, but I have a personal experience of a very similar case.
I logged into our banks internet banking facility. I wanted to make a payment on Friday, 5th February 2010. I went through the identification of the recipient, and the payment and changed the offered date from Monday 8th, to Friday 5th. It refused the payment request, saying that I must choose a date between Monday the 8th and some date in June.
So I picked the 6th (Saturday). Still no go. Then the 7th (Sunday). Still wouldn’t accept it. Finally, I selected the 8th February, a Monday. Bingo! Payment will be processed.
It then processes the payment and tells me that the payment will be taken from the account on Friday the 5th February and deposited in the target account later that day. Which was exactly what I wanted in the first place, and it kept telling me it wouldn’t do.
Imagine my annoyance at having, for ten to fifteen minutes been told I couldn’t do what I wanted, and then being told that despite offering a different date for the payment, it would be paid earlier than I’d actually requested? What if I *had* wanted to pay on the Monday, 8th Feb? Then the funds would have been out of my account on the 5th, and not the 8th, as requested.
I’m disturbed by my Banks inability to work out when they are prepared to act, and the misrepresentation of the dates of actual activity, versus requested. It makes me less confident that they’ll do as I request. and I’m now more likely to pick up the phone or drop into the Bank. Or to change banks.
Purchase Processes – Especially For Special Offers
Our client had a similar issue – there was a particular offer they made, which couldn’t be fulfilled through the order interface, until after another action had been completed. But this wasn’t expressed clearly to users. They wanted the offer, signed up for what they were told to buy, and then couldn’t see the mechanism to access the offer – until they’d completed another stage in the the checkout. There were technical reasons why this order of actions was important – but the user could have been given a text notice that this is what the system would do. It’s no good when only *your* staff know how the system works – it is the customer that needs to be told, and told clearly, or conversion rates online suffer and the customer service phone lines heat up.
The only diagnostic that this company identified was an increased dropout in the funnel and decrease in conversion rates – when they were expecting total sales to increase.
This is a classic example of “you have to understand your business the way that a customer sees it, not how you know it works”.
This article is part of a series of short meditations on user interaction and the extension into social marketing, following on from a look at reducing the barriers to interaction, and some of the pros and cons of allowing user generated content, in “SEO: Remember Relevance?“
