Keep your shirt on

So I was shopping for my brother's birthday present today.  I live in the Philippines, he lives in the UK.  I decided to order him some gift vouchers from Charles Tyrwhitt.  I searched for Charles Tyrwhitt through Google and landed on their homepage www.ctshirts.co.uk.

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't see where I would find gift vouchers.  I used the site search and was taken to a page where I could choose between electronic gift vouchers and paper gift vouchers.  I thought it would be nice for my brother to receive something in the post, so I clicked on the paper option.

You can choose your voucher amount from a range of pre-selected figures.  There is no £10 option.  Even though the image on the right hand side of the page shows a £10 voucher.  There is also no option to enter your own amount.

OK, I'll go for £40.  Nice one Charles Tyrwhitt, you've just upsold me by £10.

You have to pay £4.95 for delivery.  For an envelope with a card and piece of paper in it!  I know First Class stamps have gone up in price, but I'm sure they're still only 60 pence.  You may as well have the shirt off my back.

So I decided to check out the electronic vouchers.

Look how different the email gift voucher page is.  You only have 3 pre-selected options.  And you can enter your own amount.  It's much more flexible.  Why can't this be the case for the paper vouchers?

Eugh, but look at the image options for the email.  Do you think that a bloke would want to be receiving an email with pictures of other blokes?  Really?  And what if the gift is for a woman (they do womenswear too)?  I went for the blue shirt, purple tie & cufflinks picture.  Riveting.

And then for 'Your message'...

You're asked to fill 'Your name' in which is automatically populated in the 'Your message' field.  This doesn't leave you with a huge amount of creative licence e.g. if you wish to sign the email from you and your family, or use a nickname.  So now he'll have the rather clunky 'Love Becca...' followed by my full name.  Great.

The checkout process seems to be generic, regardless if you're sending an email voucher or not.  I had to enter delivery address (no option to enter an email, but I had already done this) and was told how long the delivery will take.  Not really relevant for an e-voucher!

Hopefully the vouchers will arrive in his inbox on his birthday.  And hopefully he will be able to use them in-store and online.  There's no indication if this is the case or not.

Deceptive download

I was just sent a large file - ironically by a usability supplier.  I recieved the email saying "you have been sent a large file - click here to download it".  With services like YouSendIt or WeTransfer, what follow is a pretty simple experience.  But with Sendspace, I was faced with one of the most deceptive interfaces I've seen: 

 Take a look at the interface above and guess which link needs to be clicked to download the large file I've been sent...




Nope, it's not the black "Download" button...

 

Nope, it's not the yellow "Download" button...



Nope, it's not even the link that says, "Click here to start download".


It's the little blue link low on the page stating "Chlick here to start download from Sendspace"


Tricky.

What's more important: 'sign in' or 'sign up'?

You sign in to sites more often than you sign up for sites.  So, what would you expect to be most prominent on the home page of sites requiring you to have an account?  The sign in part, surely?

Not necessarily, it would appear.  Take the popular professional networking site Linkedin – the most prominent element on their home page is ‘Join Linkedin Today’.  But you only need to join, or sign up once.  You will probably want to update your profile or check your messages or carry out any number of other tasks that you can only carry out if you’re signed in, much more often.  Where is ‘Sign in’?  It forms part of the main navigation at the top of the page – it doesn’t exactly stand out, or make it easy for users to sign in quickly.

 

Similarly, on Twitter, prominence is shared between the ‘Search’ feature and ‘Sign up now’.  Sign in is less prominent, at the top of the page, and you can’t fill your details in directly on this page – you need to click ‘Sign in’ to see the sign in fields.

Compare this to Facebook.  The sign up area still has more prominence that the sign in fields, but the big difference here is that you can enter your sign in details directly on this page.

And then you have the webmail providers.  Their sign in tends to have more prominence than their ‘sign up’.

But there might still be room for improvement.  Take Ymail (Yahoo’s webmail).  Whilst you are able to sign in directly from the home page, it is lower down the page than the ‘Sign up’ message, and it appears to have prominence on the page because of other strong elements on the page e.g. the ‘benefits’ information about Ymail.

 

There is less going on, on Google Mail’s homepage, which probably helps make the sign in area clearer and more prominent on the page (even if the ‘benefits’ of Google Mail do take up more space on the page).

Similarly, Hotmail’s sign in area is clear and prominent – perhaps more so than Google Mail’s.  It is given equal prominence to the ‘benefits’ of Hotmail content.

A user's experience on your site will be strongly influenced by how easy or difficult they perceive a task to be.  By making it easy for the majority of users to carry out the popular tasks on your site, you are one step closer to providing a great user experience for all users.

My account: I just want to be able to log in

I recently signed up for an airmiles credit card – you know the type: you buy things and for every pound you spend, you get a mile or so back.

How many miles do I have?  And where can I fly to with my miles?  A fairly common task you might argue?  And therefore, fairly easy to do?  Not so.

I fell at the first hurdle – logging in to my account.  You can enter either your email address or your membership number.  I had never received a membership number, and as I had never been to the site before I didn’t think they would have a record of my email address.

I tried my email address anyway, as I had applied for the credit card online and had used my email address on the application.  It didn’t work.

I sent a message to my credit card provider via their online messaging system to request my membership number.  When I have used online messaging systems previously (e.g. on www.ebay.co.uk) I have received a message in my email inbox when my message has been replied to.  Not here.  I had to keep logging back into my credit card account to check for new messages.  They were not quick with their replies either – it took a good 4-5 days before I got a reply.

But, I digress.  I just want to find out how many miles I have, and where they can take me.  In fact, I’d be pretty happy right now if I could just log in to my account.

Back to my airmiles provider.  I now had a membership number, which I typed into the ‘Membership number/email address’ box.  I tried one of my passwords (yes, yes, I know I should have unique passwords for every account… but seriously?) and was presented with the ‘Forgotten your password?’ page, with a message highlighted in pink “You do not have an email address registered to your account, please contact us via one of the email addresses above detailing your membership number so we can resolve this.”  BUT THERE IS NO EMAIL ADDRESS ON THIS PAGE!!!  And why do I have to email you to register an email address?  Why can’t I just validate it online?

So, I’ve hit a dead end.  I can’t log in to my account.  And how do I find out what email address I should use to register my email address?  After a few clicks, I end up back on the login page, and notice a ‘I don’t have a password’ link.  Clicking on this and I finally see some email addresses.  Yes, multiple email addresses.  Just give me one email address.  Don’t make me think about which one is correct.

More than 7 days later I have still not received a reply from my chosen airmiles company.  Perhaps these credit cards aren’t so beneficial after all.  But it isn’t the credit card provider’s fault – they provide me with an airmiles balance.  I just can’t find out what I can do with these, or how I use them.  Or log in to my account to see that they are actually being recorded in the proper place.

Online returns: it doesn’t have to be a black hole

Buying things online can be a risk.  What if you change your mind?  Or the product doesn’t quite match your expectations?  Your heart sinks.  There are so many obstacles standing in the way of you getting your money back, or getting the product you really want!  You have to trek to the post office, stand in a long queue, and then you have the reputation of the Royal Mail to contend with – is the package actually going to get back to the right place?

So often, when you buy a product online and you have to return it, you get little, if any feedback throughout the returns process.  You constantly have to check your bank account to see if the refund has been made, or you have to contact the seller to see if they have received the item you have sent to them.  This simply adds to your levels of frustration with the company (especially if you’re returning an item which is faulty, or not what you expected from their description in the first place).

I recently had to return some spare parts for my Hoover vacuum cleaner.  Whilst not flawless, I had a comparably good experience on www.espares.com.  In-between buying the parts and receiving them, I actually decided to purchase an entirely new vacuum cleaner (it’s a long story, but essentially the aforementioned Hoover emitted a distinct burning smell accompanied by sparks whenever it was first turned on).

On the confirmation email that I received from espares.com when I ordered the parts, I noticed that you had 14 days to return items and there was a handy link to the ‘Refunds and Returns guide’.  I followed this link, and arrived on a Hoover branded page with information all about returns.  I discovered that, in order to return an item, you need a ‘returns authorisation’.

I didn’t have a this ‘returns authorisation’, so I phoned the customer service number given on this page, explained my situation to the friendly man on the other end of the phone and was given a ‘returns authorisation’ number along with instructions of where to post the items.  The process so far had been hassle free, and I was a happy customer.

Espares.com didn’t stop there though.  I logged into my email account a few minutes after the call, and there was an email confirming our conversation including the vital ‘returns number’ and details of where to send the package.  I felt reassured that they were now expecting my return package, and that I had all the information I needed to complete the return.

A couple of days later, I received another email from espares.com confirming that they had received the returned parts, and on the same day I received another email saying that they had refunded the transaction.

This may seem like a lot of emails, but they were impeccably timed.  Receiving feedback throughout the returns process reassured me that my refund was being handled quickly and efficiently, which in turn gave me confidence in espares.com.