Don’t sacrifice the customer experience on your website! Normally, striving to give a potential customer personal attention would be considered a good thing, but I came across a site yesterday that took that goal a little too far, and sacrificed their website usability and the customer experience in the process.One of our clients, InnocraftDesigns.com, is a full-service home remodeling company that specializes in CAPS certified “Aging In Place” home accessibility remodeling. This means that they work with aging seniors to remodel their home with walk-in showers, safety bars in the bathroom, doorway widening for wheelchair access, and things like that to allow them to continue living in their own home as they age. Inno-Craft Designs is a local dealer for EZ Access ramps (www.homecareproducts.com). Installing wheelchair ramps is a big part of the Inno-Craft Designs’ accessibility remodeling.As I was making an effort to build some incoming links for this client, I checked out the EZ Access website. As a dealer for their products, I wanted to make sure that EZ Access was linking to my client. On the home page there is a “Find A Dealer” search button, which of course I clicked on.Instead of taking me to a page of “locate by State” or “enter your ZIP code” or something like that which I was expecting, I am taken to a form entitled “Information Request,” with first name, last name, phone number, email address, city, state and ZIP code as required fields.This surprised me for a number of reasons, one of which is that their primary target buyers are the disabled and the elderly. Many elderly people are going to be reluctant to provide this type of personal info just to locate a store. Not to mention the fact that they may not have an email address. What happens in that case? I could imagine a lot of confused people. Secondly, there was nothing on the page to indicate what would happen next. Would someone call me? Should I check my email? Would clicking submit give me what I wanted?I fill out the information and click submit, hoping that the next page will provide me some useful info. But it doesn’t, it merely says, “Thank you for your submission” and a close window button. What about that dealer info I wanted? I close the window and poof! It disappears, along with my personal information and their opportunity to really connect with a potential customer.At this point, I start making myself some lunch, totally confused about what would happen next. To their credit, a friendly sales rep called about 5 minutes later. When I explained what my intentions were, the lady said the website was previously set up to locate dealers by ZIP code but the owners wanted to provide a more “personal experience,” because people sometimes don’t understand the type and length of ramp that they actually need for their situation.Got it, but there’s a big gap here between the good intentions and the implementation. EZ Access is a great vendor with high-quality, useful products and an obviously responsive customer service department. But after going through their website as a customer would, I found a simple, positive way that they could improve the site experience of their visitors with the addition of one or two sentences on that Information Request page. A little more effort and they could have some really informative content in place about how they want to provide for the best customer experience by making sure their needs are properly met. Without this, it’s a missed opportunity to connect with customers and an example of customer service gone awry.
Posted on February 7th, 2008 by Vanessa
Filed under: Web Design and Usability
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