Hiding Basic Information Can Cost You a Customer
Issue #48 - February 13th
Earlier this week my wife and I came across a posting on Facebook advertising a Beatles tribute concert with a unique twist. Now we’ve been to a lot of Beatles-related concerts over the years, and the Fab Four play a big part in our creative life with a book, podcast, and newsletter dedicated to their early history. So the concert seemed like it was something we’d like to attend.
Our first question was, what date was it on so we could check our schedules.
Seems like an obvious straightforward question.
But apparently the organizers and/or whoever designed their website felt it should be a secret.
As you can see from the above General Info list about the concert, the actual date and showtimes were only available by accessing the ticket selector. When we clicked the “Tickets” button to find the schedule we were immediately presented with the ticket price and a “Buy Now” call-to-action and we still had no idea of when the concert would take place!
Naturally we didn’t make a purchase, and the concert will happen without us attending (no matter what day it’s on.)
If you look further down the General Info list at the FAQ entry an easy solution is right there - have text with the date and time information followed immediately by a link to the ticket selector.
I understand wanting to drive interested visitors to the ticketing stage through a call to action - but withholding essential information that is vital to the purchasing decision process seems counter-productive to me - as all it did was cause friction and frustration.
To me this is a perfect example of content and UX flow designed to meet the needs of the organization - get people to buy tickets - rather than to meet the needs of those prospective ticket buyers - provide them with the basic essential information needed to decide if they want to do business with you.
Good effective content design and a frictionless user experience is always driven by the customers’ needs.
Alan
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Talking About Storytelling
Recent Events
Just a reminder you can find my recent conversation with Larry Swanson on the Content Strategy Insights podcast about the power of storytelling at https://ellessmedia.com/csi/alan-porter/
Or you can catch the video version below.
If you missed it you can still access my webinar on Customer Focused Storytelling that was hosted by The Content Wrangler
Upcoming Events
On March 15th I’m scheduled to speak at the Boston DITA User Group meeting.
I’m looking forward to presenting “Is DITA Just a Story” at the ConVex conference in San Jose in April, 2025.
And in June I’ll be making a return to the CX Behind The Scenes podcast to discuss the AI Hype Cycle.
Weekly Thought
Customer experience is now a mission-critical, cross-functional activity. Delivering and supporting a positive customer experience is all about removing friction from the process. The smoother the transition from department to department, the better the experience.
Customer Focused Storytelling Workshops
We are now taking bookings for our popular Customer Focused Storytelling Workshops for Q2/2025, and we wanted to make sure that as a newsletter reader you got an early opportunity to lock-in a date.
“Weaving storytelling into the mix makes the content more compelling, accessible, and effective!”
Learn how to deliver content-driven experiences that your customers relate to on our two-day Customer Outcome Focused Storytelling workshop.
In this workshop, we will:
Examine content from the customer’s perspective.
Plan how to adapt content delivery to meet the needs of a rapidly changing marketplace
Examine why every business transaction is a story
Outline the 10 Rules of Storytelling as applied to Customer Experience
Apply proven storytelling techniques to your content.
Identify potential opportunities for incorporating storytelling techniques
into the production of your customer-facing content assets.Facilitate an interactive feedback session on your existing customer-facing content.
If you would like more details, or you like to discuss reserving a date for yourself and your team to benefit from a Customer Focused Storytelling Workshop, just email us at ajp@4jsgroup.com to reserve your date.
In The Bookstore
If you enjoy the contents of this newsletter and would like more, we have three books always available from XML Press.
You can also check out The Content Pool website or follow us on FaceBook. - You can also find Alan on most of the social media platforms @alanjporter.
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Till next time - have fun paddling in The Content Pool.
Alan J. Porter
The Content Pool™ is a division of the 4Js Group LLC