The Authentic Eccentric

I happened to get into a conversation today with a friend about creating hardcover photo albums via online services. I’d just read Ulrich Boser’s review on Slate, so I forwarded her the link and opened a new tab up for their top pick, Shutterfly. She had recently seen a book produced from My Publisher, so I pulled that site up to look them over as well.

As a developer, I rarely get to hear customer feedback at the moment when the buying decision is actually made. While I use personas and do user testing in the process, the laboratory nature of those site interactions tend to limit the amount/type of business intelligence I get from them. After experiencing it today, I think I’m going to add another layer of usability testing - she turned several of my notions upside down during our call and certainly challenged a few of my assumptions about “best practices” versus practical profits.

A couple of notes about this buyer. She’s a highly desirable demographic but only buys from a handful of sites because she’s concerned with maintaining her privacy and security. She’s computer and internet literate but not especially interactive in her behavior. A recent digital camera purchase has her getting more comfortable with the concept of web 2.0 style sharing sites.

While we were on the phone, she checked out Shutterfly and couldn’t figure out how to view product prices without registering. Not even the lure of 15 free prints was enough to get her to part with her contact information - even the Trust-e logo wasn’t enough to convince her of their privacy practices. She was looking for the traditional hyperlink similar to the one for their site terms, and when it wasn’t readily apparent, she cruised over to check out MyPublisher. Total time elapsed: 56 seconds. Ouch.

After we got off the phone, I spent some time going over both sites. The marketer in me admires the heck out of how clearly Shutterfly directs visitors towards their most desired action, site registration. They’re doing it right, in other words - building a list of customers who trusted them enough to part with their personal information to continuously market to, directing the visitor to the next action and they’re wearing all the right safety seals. Yet, in less than a minute, she was gone because she couldn’t find the information she was most interested in - turnaround, prices and styles - within a single click without hitting a registration barrier.

Of course, MyPublisher’s site is no slouch, either - it’s clean, minimal lines and images lead you through all the appropriate steps, and the layout clearly communicates their most desired action - downloading their free book software and creating a book. They take a little more relaxed pace of getting your information - not until you’re actually 100% satisfied and ready to click “purchase” do they ask for you to transfer your personal information - right up to that point you’re free to do whatever you want with their software anonymously.

Ultimately, for me it was interesting to observe best practices meet the reality of the market. What especially struck me, obviously, was that the site registration became a barrier to purchase - it was such an obstacle that she didn’t even seriously consider them. That may well be a deliberate strategy of theirs, I just found it at odds to what I normally see in the lab so it made me stop, think and go hmmm…

What barriers to purchase exist in your business? How are you finding them? The comments section is open - discuss.