Pat’s Point of View

1. Discovery and optimism

   

   I’ll just jump online and find somewhere to make up some business cards for my new designer baby clothes venture. Oh that’s handy! BusinessCards2u.com lets me design and order my cards online.

   I’ll carefully type in my details, and I should have new business cards in minutes! Have to make sure I get all my contact details correct. Hmm needs something snazzy. I’ll bold this, underline that. Ah much better. Submit.

2. Suspicion

   

   Huh? “Your request could not be processed”? OK well try it again, silly computer. Submit.

3. Shock and confusion

   

   What do you mean I “haven’t entered any content for my business card”? Yes I did, it took me ages to get it just right! You mean you’ve lost all my work? I have to type it in again?!

4. Desperation and guilt

   

   Oh noooooo! I must have done something wrong. I thought I did everything it said. Arrgh it’s all my fault!

5. Denial

   

   No, no, no it can’t all be gone! It must be in there somewhere! Command+Z…undo!

6. Anger and bitterness

   

   That’s ridiculous, why didn’t your website save my details? I’m never using this again! Time is money, people!

7. Acceptance and resolution

   

   Hey, I found this website Moo.com and lots of people say good things about it. If I have to start all over again, I’ll try them instead.

(The moral of the story is simple, if you want the business—including that of 6 month old entrepreneurs—you need to get the user experience right. Your potential customers will go elsewhere otherwise. Oh and it’s also an excuse to post these cute pics of Grace.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under User experience. If you enjoyed this post, you might also like to leave a comment, find out more about me or follow @patrickkennedy on Twitter.

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