Paysite Bitching From The Surfer Perspective
I’m working on updating my review site, and part of that process for me is to line up sites for listing / short reviews prior to doing a full review. I’ve been going over a few of the site selection, and I just keep seeing things that drive me nuts on tours. Of course there’s all the usual traffic leaks and other annoying crap off my affiliate links, but I’ll ignore that for now.
Tour Annoyances
Instead, I’m going to embrace my surfer side for a moment (scary, I know) and talk about how goddamn annoying some of this stuff is. The first big thing I noticed - no Join link to hit immediately. If I’ve been presold on the stuff, either by a review or a gallery or what have you, I don’t want to go through a tour. I want to buy it right now, and when I have to either actively search for the join link because it’s hidden somewhere, or click through 15 pages of tour - you can guess that my desire to buy has gone significantly down.
Second are all the sites that don’t bother to tell me how much their membership options are. I’m sure someone thought that was a good idea, and it’s not as big a turn off as the first complaint. However, I hate having to click on pay by credit card when I have no idea how much it’s going to be. Obviously the price point can be indicated in the presell that sent them to the site, but how many people are actually going to remember that?
Going off the second point, having to give ANY type of information prior to actually being told how much I will be paying is ridiculous. Whoever thought that was a good idea is out of their minds.
Flash based sites get my ire a lot because 9 times out of 10, the flash does nothing to enhance the site functionality. This holds true for tours, where I have to wait for the flash to load up and play before I even get a chance to go on the tour. Don’t make me wait, you can have all the flash you want but at least include an alternative navigation bar in the footer.
Members area sections that are shown on the tour (such as those that just use the same layout from tour to member area) that make you repeatively click cancel just to stop the login prompt. If I want to get off, the last thing I want to deal with is clicking by your sidebar links by mistake and having a login popup not want to go away. At the very least, just let it go to server 401 after the first try. What would be even better is if your 401 errors go to your join page (with the bloody price on it!!!!!!)
Member Area Annoyances
This is a fun one. Consider that maybe I’ve signed up even after jumping through some of the hoops above. One thing I’m amazed at - how many sites seem to have their member’s area on a much crappier server than what their tour is on. Do you really think people are just going to ignore the fact that it takes forever to load up the content?
Not making it easy to see the latest updates is another great trick. On one site I went through several sections that haven’t been updated in months (there’s a great impression to keep the surfer there) before I finally found where their weekly update was. Don’t make me dig.
These next few are more of a personal preference than anything else, but I do see these options on a lot of sites. When I get these little features taken away after having the convenience on other sites, it tends to bug me just a little bit. Zipped photo sets, high and low quality movies (or just downloadable movies in general), search with many different categories to narrow things down, and paginated and breadcrumb browsing. It’s funny how these simple little things can improve the browsing experience so much and make me want to stick around.
Proper navigation is one feature that far too many sites seem to overlook. Here’s a little tip - making your stuff harder to browse through doesn’t make the surfer stay longer to try to wade through it all with awkward browsing. They just go to your competitor. For the love of God, list your major sections on a top or sidebar. If you want to include sub categories under the sections, that’s just gravy.
