The Consequences of Not Having a User-Friendly Website

I am going to try to write this post without naming any names. But, if you do happen to figure out this company by the end of my post, good for you, and I take no responsibility in your figuring it out. Most likely you will though and I hope you do.

There is a certain ice cream company that gives free ice cream to it’s customers for their birthday. Well, because it was my birthday Saturday, my wife and I decided that we would just print out the coupon from the website and get some ice cream. Of course, since I have done this in the past, the default location was set to Utah.

As you can see from the image above, the first screen brings me to a page to saying to print off my coupon. Knowing the process which comes next, I figured there was nothing to worry about, but I was wrong.

With this second page, I received clear instructions that I needed to change my location before I printed off my coupon. No problems. I clicked the link and moved on to change my account information.

Once I came to this page, I changed my information and changed the location of my favorite store to Royal Oak. After submitting the form and receiving confirmation that my information had been successfully changed, I headed back over the the birthday section, only to learn that the coupon was not going to change my location. FAIL.

After going back and forth repeatedly, I learned that there was no way to change the information on the coupon. So, I was determined to prove myself by printing out the second page that I had come to in the beginning, explaining that I needed to change my information before printing the page. When I printed the page, I looked at what came out of the printer and was shocked. The actual coupon printed as opposed to the instructions. The system was designed to fail!

If you notice, the first button that I pressed said “Print Coupon.” No where does it tell you that your store must be correct until after you have pressed print. From that point on, you cannot change the store location, meaning I was tricked by the website.

So, ice cream creamery which was supposed to prepare my ice cream on a cold stone of marble, this post is for you. I will from now on go to a competitor, and not to you. That is, until my wife’s birthday next year, when we will take advantage of your free ice cream and still pay you nothing.

What can we all learn from this. Make your websites user-friendly and don’t trick your visitors. They don’t like it and will have no desire to purchase from your ever again. If you believe your website isn’t as user-friendly as it should be, Contact TM today. We can help you avoid a bad situation.