I should probably get up, walk around, and have a cup of coffee before I write this post. Or maybe a little righteous anger over something small is good for the soul? I’ll go with the latter… I recently ordered a 2010 calender from Runner’s World. A few days ago I received the calendar, along with the invoice. Their payment is handled through a company called Rodale. I just went to pay my invoice at www.rodalequickpay.com, and the experience left me frustrated, and incidentally still in debt to Runner’s World.
I know this shouldn’t bother me that much, but let me walk you through the experience, and then make a couple of observations.
The Rodale order process
I typed in www.rodalequickpay.com (yes, the irony of the “quickpay” part of the URL is pretty thick), and arrived at this screen:
Immediately, this bugs me. I just want to pay an invoice, I don’t want to have to create an account. There’s also so much wrong about this design:
- There are two calls to action, and the affordance is all wrong. The first text you see is “If you are a new visitor…”, but the “Create New Login” button is too far away, making it look like you should log in if you are a new visitor.
- The “Login” button… first of all, it’s “Log in” (action), not “Login” (noun), but let’s ignore that pet peeve for now. The button looks different from the top button, and is also much smaller, resulting in a pretty confusing experience on this first screen.
- I don’t understand the text “Please use this site to pay orders in full” at the bottom. Not sure why it’s needed, and not sure why it’s not at the top of the screen. Who is going to read that far down?
But ok, since I am a new visitor, I decided to create a new Login:
Ok, this is where things get really out of control.
- I’m not even going to begin to talk about the copy. “eMail” in one spot, “E-Mail” in another? And “Thank you!”? But I digress.
- The first big problem here is that account creation and invoice detail information happen on the same screen. I should enter my account level information first, and then move on to my transaction level information. Especially considering that…
- …It is extremely difficult to find your account number and invoice number on the paper statement. First, the microcopy about where to find it is not useful at all. There is no “appropriate button” to click, and the clickable text “On My Invoice” and “On My Statement” don’t look like links and actually don’t go anywhere when you click on them. (Read this post at Polon, and this one by Joshua Porter about the importance of writing good microcopy on forms)
So anyway, I start typing in random numbers from my paper invoice just to see if I can get somewhere, and this is the error message I get:
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Don’t know why it’s a browser error, but fine. So I know I’m looking for an Account number of >10 characters and an Order number of >12 characters. Turns out that’s not entirely accurate though. The form doesn’t let you enter more than 10 or 12 characters depending on the field. So those numbers should actually be exactly 10 and 12 characters. Why doesn’t the error message say that? “Can not be less than”? But hey, we’re making progress. Off I go to look for those numbers. It appears I got my Account number right, because next I got this error message:
Ok, now we have in-line messaging, not browser error messaging. But whatever. I verified the crap out of that number, but I couldn’t get past this screen. It actually makes me sad because I’m sure the payment page would have been a real treat to write about. I tried to call the toll free number but no one’s there, so as of this moment I still owe Runner’s World $21.75. I’m really sorry guys, I will pay you as soon as you let me.
The point I’m trying to make
So here’s the problem. The Rodale website was put together to accept payment. This is how they make money. But there was absolutely 0 thought put into the user experience, so I was simply unable to pay them. And look, I know it’s much easier to take a design apart than it is to create a good one, I get that. But UX design is becoming a mature field now. It’s 2010. Shouldn’t we be able to get rid of designs like this, and demand something better? It’s not rocket science, it’s a methodical thought processes to design a good experience. Form design is difficult to get right, but it doesn’t have to look like Apple, it just has to get you through the process without friction.
What do you think? Is it too early to rise up in anger against designs like this? If not, what can we do to “spread the UX”, so to speak?
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post. I couldn’t agree more. I often wonder if the person “designing” a check out process has never actually purchased anything online before. The sad thing is, some very minimal user testing with 3 or 4 people performing 1 or 2 tasks would have found 90% of these problems. This is what user testing is fantastic for: finding confusing or problematic things in the office BEFORE
Hi Laura – absolutely. In fact, I’d say even a simple heuristic evaluation by an experienced designer could have fixed most of the issues. That combined with some user testing could have made this a very easy experience.
Thank you very much for pointing out exactly what was wrong with our user experience. As the new CEO of Rodale, I am very committed to improving all aspects of our business. This was one area no one had looked at for a long time. A very long time! Thanks to you, we are making some very quick and positive changes…and getting rid of all those old invoices we were trying to use up (ahhh the constant struggle between thrift and environmental efficiency and user experience!). I hope your next experience with us is a good one!
Hi Maria. Thanks for stopping by! Glad to hear that you’re making some changes, that’s really encouraging to hear. Sorry for being so hard on you guys — I ended up writing this post before I could get that cup of coffee…
I am also happy to report that I sent you guys a check, so I should no longer be in debt to Runner’s World
That’s so awesome! Always great when a random blog post results in a company making the right changes!
No worries Rian, I should probably send you a check for doing us the favor of pointing out what needed to change. In general, though, my rule is never do anything without at least two strong black cups of coffee for fortification.
(And thanks to you, Tony, for pointing out this post to me!)
All is well that ends well.
I have had a similiar, frustrating experience with Rodale as well. My initial visit to their website was to order one workout video, their website was very misleading and confusing, I ended up accidently ordering three workout videos. The website has no customer service phone number, if you have a question the only means of communication are vai email and you must wait for a reply within 24 hours (if your lucky). After canceling all my order(s) via email, (took five days)I still received one workout video in the mail that I did not want. I immediately returned it but continue to recieve a bills. They conveniently provide an (800) so you may call and pay immediately. Wish they had made it that easy and convenient with a customer service phone number on the website when I had tried to cancel my original order. Email is a great form of communication but occasionally a good old fashioned phone call works amazingly well. Never again!!!
OK, to start with they would not let me go any farther then the Login Password section. No matter what I put in there, they wouldn’t accept it & they gave me little information why they wouldn’t accept it. I tried over & over again with different logins passwords, but it would come back to me that they needed different information to fill it out with, but no information about what I was doing wrong. As far as I know, I haven’t been in this Rodale company before, so all I did was get madder & madder every time they thing came back to me!! I will send a check to them after I have cooled off, but it’s going to take awhile, so they can just wait!!
About 8 weeks ago I started receiving email advertisements for each of the Rodale products (Men’s Health, Running, Prevention, etc), apparently because my email address was on a list. I have absolutely no problem with Rodale’s vision or products – quite the opposite! However, our family is not big into magazines for a variety of reasons, so we were not interested in receiving Rodale publications. I was consternated that no option was presented to stop receiving Rodale advertising overall. Instead I had to individually unsubscribe to each of the Rodale magazine advertisements – and even after receiving a Confirmation page for unsubscribing, I continued receiving ads. Lots of them. Once my inbox was overflowing I tried contacting Rodale customer service. I waited 20 minutes on the phone, then heard that it would take another 6 weeks to “fully unsubscribe” from Rodale’s email notification queue. It’s really unfortunate. Rodale strives to be a *different* kind of company on its face. Yet its policies toward customers are same-0ld-same-old.
Wow – I continue to be amazed at the variety of bad experience people are having with Rodale. Keep the stories coming – maybe we can make a difference!