Tuesday, February 19  

The Anatomy Of The Dumbest Web Site In The World (Or How To Stop People Buying What You Sell)

I was quite excited this morning to read the blog of the guys over at Made To Stick.

You see, they had written about a new business model being implemented - Cheaper By The Chapter - and how their book is the guinea pig for the new model.

That is, you can buy just 1 chapter if you want. Or 2 or 3 , etc.

A brilliant, brilliant concept.

A crap, crap execution.


The process to buy the book is clumsy, annoying and actually doesn't even work!

Let's Take A Look

Okay, step one: I read the Made To Stick blog about buying 1 chapter at a time.

"Great idea," thought I. I'll buy a chapter and see how it works and then maybe blog about it here and write about it in the SitePoint Tribune (with 140,000 subscribers).

Step 2: I clicked the link the guys provided to go over and buy the book.

All good so far.

Step 3: I selected chapter 2 to buy.

A pop up came up with an error.

No drama - these things happen, I'll try again later.

2nd try: Another pop up, different error.
3rd time lucky - I'm in!

Woohooooo! Or so you'd think.

Step 4: Once I'm in I get the dreaded "Create an account" screen.

You know the one - the one that says to buy you have to either login with your previously created username and password (like you're going to remember that!) OR you have to create an account.

"Create An Account" = Less Sales

If you have that as part of your shopping cart, your sales go down, down, down (or they never actually get up, up, up because everyone bails out at this stage).

In the interests of research for you dear reader, I plough on. Heh, what can I say? I'm a hell of a guy!

So I go to create an account......

All For A $2.99 e-book Remember

Stop here for 1 minute:

Remember, all I want to do is buy a $2.99 pdf file.

I'm thinking to myself I've already wasted enough time on this, but, like I say) I'm a saint so I l keep going.

The Create an Account page has a staggering 10 mandatory fields!



(Every single mandatory field you have will generally reduce the % of people who bother to fill it in - but I do, because this whole thing is turning to crap and I want to see how it turns out.)

Step 5: So I fill in the form. But I'm already annoyed.

Bugger!

My state isn't there, so I select the -. No problem.

Then I come to the country.

"US" is the only option allowed.

Because I live in Australia, I ignore that and push on and complete the form.

After all, nowhere on the site or check out process did I see it say they "don't sell outside the US".

Remember, it's a $2.99 ebook pdf file I'm trying to buy.

That's when I start getting the error messages that I have to choose a state and that my zip hasn't got enough numbers.

After a few minutes of editing stuff I gave up.

Annoyed With Everyone - Even my Coffee Guy

Annoyed with Random House. Annoyed with the Made To Stick guys. Annoyed with the guy at the local coffee shop (my coffee this morning was cold - I am one angry man!).

• So the morons idiots people at Random House miss out on a sale.
• They damage their brand.
• They damage the brand of the Made To Stick guys.

Random House Have No Clue

Basically, they screw everyone over and waste their time because they have no clue how people buy and, amazingly enough with this web thing, don't think that people from other countries might actually try and buy from them.

And that is how you don't sell your book (and yes, I'm still angry!).

Cheers

Brendon