Don’t make it hard to buy your product
This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO
This past weekend, as I do every July 4th, I spent some time shopping in the outlets of Kittery, Maine. I was surprised by a few things this year: not only were the stores much more empty than usual, but the sales were much more aggressive. The recession is in full swing with our neighbors in the North.
With the discounted sales and relatively easy parking, my wife and I were ready and willing to shop. We went in about 10-12 stores over the course of two days, and I was continually surprised at how confusing it was to figure out the prices of the merchandise. The worst offender was IZOD — take a look at this picture:
Can anyone (quickly) tell me how much that $24.99 shirt ACTUALLY costs? IZOD, why are you making it so hard for me to figure out the price? When the salesperson asked me if I needed any help, I asked them if the sign meant that they would pay me 20% if I bought something. She didn’t seem that amused. By the way, I refused to buy anything off that rack. However, my wife did buy me a nice IZOD shirt, so I guess we helped keep IZOD in business. I really hope the marketing people at IZOD monitor the blogosphere…. they should be ashamed at themselves for making consumers think so much. (By the way, that $24.99 shirt would actually cost $4.99 — 80% off).
I was reminded about my weekend shopping experiences, when I came across this screenshot of a registration “Captcha.” We’ve all been frustrated by these illegible security challenges at one time or another. I don’t think I need to add much commentary — the last attempt of the person who was trying to register says it all.
If you are a MyPunchbowl user, I hope you never have this kind of experience trying to buy something from our site. For example, why not upgrade your MyPunchbowl account to a Premium or Plus account? I promise you that it will be a quick and easy process.
July 12th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Hmmm, I would’ve just plugged that into my handy dandy Discount Calculator™…
(1-.2) * ((1-.5) * ((1-.5) * x)) where x is the price of the shirt, which becomes more simply…
.8*.5*.5*x = .2*x meaning you would pay 20% of the item’s original price. Voilà!
If you ever need my DCS™ (Discount Calculator Services™), I am offering it at a special price of $9.99 if you purchase it today. If not, I will have to charge you an extra 15% on top of the $6 service charge for waiting; then finally another 17% so that I can eat a better lunch than my standard oatmeal. I’m thinkin’ Five Guys today!