Random thoughts
Monday, February 23, 2009
Amazon.com: User experience delivering value
While shopping on Amazon the other day, I noticed a subtle yet still noticeable hint that I had bought the very same article already in October 2007.
At first glance, the notice would appear to drive customers away from buying; however Amazon.com has a long-standing reputation for innovation in online commerce and good customer service (although I have been less satisfied with their handling of e-mail correspondence lately) so this didn't come as a complete surprise.
Good user experience design is all about delivering value to the customer, and to the business too:
Links:
At first glance, the notice would appear to drive customers away from buying; however Amazon.com has a long-standing reputation for innovation in online commerce and good customer service (although I have been less satisfied with their handling of e-mail correspondence lately) so this didn't come as a complete surprise.
Good user experience design is all about delivering value to the customer, and to the business too:
- The customer may have bought the product earlier and order another copy as a present, which was actually the case for me.
- Some products, such as blank CDs/DVDs, lend themselves to repetitive orders. Knowing that this is the same product ordered before is reassuring to the customer, which means more business with fewer clicks.
- In the unlikely case that a customer accidentally orders the same product twice, chances are that she would return the product for a refund, incurring shipping and handling cost for the business; therefore not shipping the product in the first place is not only the most customer friendly, but also the most cost effective solution.
Links:
Labels: business, ibm, kudos, technology
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Customer support at its best
Shareware and open source software have been said to lack official support. This may be true for some products but certainly not for my favorite editor, EditPlus, for which personal support by the developer is second to none.
Hats off to Sangil Kim, not only does he write fantastic software and respond to feature requests and (rare) bug reports almost immediately, he is also the most organized person I can think of. When I tried to reinstall EditPlus on my new computer, I managed to locate the original registration email which had the version 1 registration key, but couldn't find the upgrade key; so after searching all places where I typically keep this type of information I sent off an e-mail to the EditPlus support address, and within a few hours received a copy of the original e-mail from 2000(!) that contained my registration key. Thank you!
Hats off to Sangil Kim, not only does he write fantastic software and respond to feature requests and (rare) bug reports almost immediately, he is also the most organized person I can think of. When I tried to reinstall EditPlus on my new computer, I managed to locate the original registration email which had the version 1 registration key, but couldn't find the upgrade key; so after searching all places where I typically keep this type of information I sent off an e-mail to the EditPlus support address, and within a few hours received a copy of the original e-mail from 2000(!) that contained my registration key. Thank you!