In my stunning statistic post, I quoted Call To Action’s claim that 70% of the time customers are prevented from buying, even when they want to.
It happened to me this morning. Here’s the situation, I’m trying to use my commuting time to better effect. I’d like to listen to audio books on business and entrepreneurship on my iPod. I did some research and decided to give Audible.com a try.
Bad interface mistakes
First, I can’t understand why the site sometimes shows a “credit” price for some books, but not all the time. As a “gold” member, you get a credit a month, good for a download of a book of your choice. A reasonable question I had was “do some books cost more than one ‘credit’?” The FAQ doesn’t say, and the fact that the books don’t always show a credit price confused the issue even more. In fact, I’m still not sure, even after using the site for an hour.
Second mistake, what the heck are those available formats? The audiobooks show colored numbers below the title, 1,2,3,4. Most have all four numbers, but some only have 2-4. What devices match up with those numbers? Does floating my cursor over the number tell me? No. The faq says that #2 is for iPod. I think. Why not “iPod”, why a number which I’m going to forget immediately?
Third mistake, the biggest yet. What software do I need? I try the FAQ, it tells me to go to the software page. I try, but it tells me I need to register a primary device to use with the system. OK, I think that is odd, since I don’t have an account to associate with, but I try. ERROR. It just sends me in the loop repeatedly, and doesn’t tell me that I can’t do that until I have an account.
BTW, the answer is, on a Mac, with an iPod, you don’t need any special software. Why don’t they trumpet that to the heavens? Isn’t that the biggest market, the iPod? Seriously, I’m a programmer and I had a hard time figuring out whether this site was going to give me an audio file I could use.
Finally, I gritted my teeth, bought an account and crossed my fingers. I used my download credit to get a copy of “Never Eat Alone : And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time” (Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz). After the download, I was given no direction about where I’d find it in iTunes, so I had to search for the file. Grrr, a fourth failure.
Despite all this, it works fine, it is a great book, and plays just fine on my iPod. I wonder how they make any money at all with that series of barriers placed squarely in front of a person who was already sold on their system. Crazy, just crazy.
Technorati Tags: audible, audiobooks, ipod
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