Your best, and most
costly lessons are right
in front of you.
Be your own customer, and find out, really.
Yesterday I got the shock of my life: I tried to buy something on my own website and couldn’t.
Funny, I buy all kinds of things on other people’s websites. I’m a one-click buyer on Amazon. I’m a Paypal customer. And I have my credit card registered and saved on every site that will allow it. In short, I trust the Internet.
In short, short - if I decide that I want to buy something online, I want to buy it fast. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not crazy about filling out an online order form (where all the boxes say it’s “mandatory” to enter my information.)
Many of you subscribe to my weekly email magazine and have taken advantage of the “deal of the week,” a special offer on a bundle of my books and CDs. Last week we decided to present something for the first time – a $20.00 discount off any of my upcoming public seminar tickets. Fair enough…
So I went to my own site to test the offer. I put in a request to buy five tickets. The website (my website) promised fast and easy purchase. And that promise was ANYTHING BUT the truth. It was a pain in the butt. I clicked off of my own site in frustration and disgust.
I immediately pulled the offer and we went through an e-commerce exercise that brought me back to reality. We revamped the purchasing process to where it IS fast and easy. And easy to understand. It’s now fixed for the short term, and we have a long-term plan in place (actually in motion) to make it even faster and easier.
MAJOR CLUE: Had I not tried to buy something from my own website, I would have never known. I would have danced along actually believing my own words, never realizing that customers were frustrated – and worse – not purchasing. Clicking off – abandoning the next step in the buying process because it was slow, cumbersome, and uninformative.
How’s yours? Think your e-commerce is great? Ever try to buy something from yourself, or are you just taking “IT’s” word for it. Or worse, believing your own instructions?
CHALLENGE: Be your own customer at least once a month.
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