Missed Opportunities
Edit: After writing this, I spent a few minutes with my Nook and realized that there is a Buy link on the color screen; in fact, it’s the first link there. I must have navigated back to the home screen somehow when I finished the sample referred to here. So I now point to Barnes & Noble as an example of a company that isn’t missing important opportunities. My basic message still holds, though.
I just bought a Nook, Barnes & Noble’s e-reader. I love it so far, despite a few flaws, and the experience of purchasing and downloading books has been seamless…except for one thing. Barnes & Noble offers free samples of e-books for download, which is great. The samples are substantial, enough to tell you whether the book is for you or not. So as soon as I got the Nook, I downloaded a bunch of samples of books that are on my wish list and started reading one. The reading experience and the book itself were excellent, and I was drawn into the story right away. So I was both disappointed and bemused when I got to the end and found…nothing. Nothing but a sentence that said “End of sample.”
Where was the link to buy the whole book? Why wasn’t there a big Buy button on that lovely color touch screen at the bottom of the Nook? Why did I have to leave the sample, go to the Shop tab in the color screen, search for the book again, and then get to buy it?
Having worked on e-commerce sites for a long time, my motto has always been “Don’t put unnecessary obstacles in the way of people who want to give you money.” I say “unnecessary obstacles” because there are, alas, some obstacles that are necessary. If you’re a wine store, for example, you need to ask for age and, at least in the US, state of residence. If you use e-mail marketing, you’ll want to ask your customers to register and provide an e-mail address—although even then, you should ask yourself if it’s more advantageous to capture as many e-mail addresses as you possibly can up front, or to allow customers to checkout as guests but give them a gentle nudge to save their information for future visits, order tracking, and other benefits.
But in general, if people want to give you money, let them! The key is to make it as easy as possible for people to buy your product, quickly and painlessly. Why are there still so many companies that don’t seem to grasp this simple idea?
