"Reaction [beta]"
I don't Love Film (or so they tell me) 17 Jul 2008
One of the challenges we often come across as user-experience professionals, is figuring out just how much information we should reveal to end-users. When creating the interface for a particular website or page design, we need to strike the right balance between what a user needs to know to get a job done and what a user really doesn't need to know (as the resultant information overload could prove confusing).
You might recall a snippet from yesterday's post on Argos that questioned what "intervening prices" were (and how "intervening prices" were relevant to the user experience). The additional information provided for Argos' 18-inch fan informs users that "...this item has been charged at intervening prices since first offered for sale" as illustrated below.
My guess is that this sentence has been included in order to address a legal requirement, as set out within the UK's Code of Practice for Traders on Price Indications (clause 1.2.8, if you're really interested). Argos' pricing policies mean that they may have to include this information by law.
And therein lies the challenge: how do you say what you have to say in a way that is meaningful to your users? And what can you simply discard as meaningless waffle?
I had a similar experience just last week where the information provided on a particular website ultimately cost them my custom. I didn't leave because I wasn't appreciative of the information that they provided me with, nor did I leave because I was dissatisfied with their service. No, I left them because one tiny snippet of information in their UI design drew attention to just how little I actually needed them.
The site in question was LoveFilm.com, a company that provides DVD-rentals by post. (In my case, up to six DVD rentals per month for £9.99).
On logging into my LoveFilm account I was presented with my DVD statement. This itemised the DVDs that I currently had in my possession, and the catalogue of films that I had previously requested. (These would be shipped to me after I returned the films that I already had.)
(No laughing at my questionable film-taste!)
Social butterfly that I am, I'm certainly aware of the fact that I seldom find the time to indulge in a little DVD watching - and I knew that the unopened DVD envelopes on my counter had been lying around for some time. However I hadn't realised quite how long they'd been gathering dust...
A close-up on my "Titles at home" summary reveals that "Resurrection Man" had actually been sitting pretty on my counter for more than eighteen months! The remaining two titles had also been kicking around for more than a year. In fact, a quick count on my fingers revealed that in the past eighteen months I had spent almost £180 borrowing a meagre five DVDs. That's £36 a title (and I hadn't even watched them)!
Yes, LoveFilm made it clear to me that I would be better off purchasing the occasional DVD with my groceries than shelling out £9.99 a month to them for rental privileges. And so our relationship had to come to an end. (Oddly, I thought I'd had the DVDs in question no more than five or six months. I suspect that I would have blindly updated my list and continued my subscription, had the shipping information been a little less explicit.)
I recognise that shipping information is perhaps critical for customers who have recently been sent a new batch of DVDs (e.g. "We sent it to you on Tuesday. If you haven't received it by now then you may want to contact our delivery agents" or the like). However I wonder if there is a better way to handle the presentation of this information, that meets the needs of LoveFilm's customers without jeopardising their custom?
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3 comments so far
carol 18 Jul 2008 08:40 AM
you think that's bad - i didn't even know that amazon had sold their dvd rentals arm to love film! as a former amazon dvds gal you can imagine my surprise when i went to log in to my amazon account recently. trying to find out what's happened to the service / where you need to go login now is a usability challenge in itself!!
Alex G 18 Jul 2008 11:19 AM
I guess the shipping information could be removed altogetether from the account landing page - though the summary of what you have at home should be kept. Shipment dates could then be moved to a separate page.
I'm not sure whether Love Film shows your entire rental history, but this could be one area where the information could be more discretely provided, along with the dates that you returned the dvds to them.
Alternatively perhaps shipping dates that are older than a set period - eg three months - could just be listed as "shipped more than three months ago"?
Paul 18 Jul 2008 11:34 AM
@Alex: Yep, as ever there are a number of different options and design directions to consider if addressing this point. Per Carol's message, after 18 months of DVD-decay I also only recently discovered that my Amazon account had become a Love Film account, therefore I'm not sure what rental history functionality Love Film offers (if any at all). As ever, a little user testing could certainly give us a steer on which solutions work and which miss the mark, though I like the thinking behind your ideas! :-)