The experience of free
Tue Apr 15th, 2008I recently signed on to a relatively new site called Beatport, an online retailer of electronic dance music. To be honest, one of the best designed dance music sites out there in terms of providing a smooth music shopping experience. And their catalog is definitely impressive to someone like me who is used to scouring the globe looking for hard to find techno records.
But with all of this, I was recently disappointed and seemingly suckered by a small amount of extremely powerful copy. The e-mail subject line (see below via Gmail)
Wow! Amazing. I was up ’till the wee hours of the evening the night before sifting through droves of tracks, adding artists to my favorite artists bin, record labels to my favorite labels bin, and even adding tracks to my shopping cart to consider for purchase (oddly enough I couldn’t seem to add tracks or releases to a favorites bin).
I open the email and the story gets richer. I’m asked to confirm my email by “clicking the link below”, which I promptly do. No problem there. Back to the e-mail, scroll down looking for the notice about my awaiting free downloads. Ten of them apparently. Woohoo. I’m psyched. And the story continues as I find the following information:
VIP! Wow I’m in.
Now obviously we know this is not leading to a positive review of this particular experience that I’m depicting. But I do need to say a few things in their benefit. First a good number of my friends support Beatport by buying records there and influencing my habits by word of mouth. My use of Beatport to download digital is likely not going to change, meaning I will likely buy those records in my cart, but that said, pay attention. The story will continue. There is room for improvement.
Know your customer
So there’s no need for drumrolling at this point as I’ve likely blown the cover on what happens next, but to say the least I was sorely disappointed. I click the link, the page loads, I log in. What am I presented with next was a bit of a shock. Ten, pre-selected tracks that scatter the globe from techno to house, trance to breaks. None of which I’m entirely psyched about. As a matter of fact, after a second or two I’m pretty much pissed.
As I said, I spent an excited and kid-like evening clicking and listening, clicking and adding to my hearts content. Essentially telling Beatport the style of music that I live for. That I love. And instead I get a pre-sorted, full-spectrum, wide-girth bin of bullocks that honestly, I don’t want cluttering my already beefy iTunes library. I want more signal and less noise.
My overarching point here is they missed an amazing opportunity. I’m sure there are economical, and perhaps legal constraints they are working within, but ultimately, my experience was a flop. This will be a story I tell my friends and foe when talking about Beatport. Of course I’ll still recommend Beatport, but this story is rich in User Experience chatter.
Managing expectations
Set my expectation, or don’t. But if you don’t fully set my expectations up-front, beware the consequences. With this recent interaction with Beatport my expectations were only set as far as being promised ten free downloads. What this translated to in my mind was an opportunity to download the five or so tracks I had selected the previous night, plus a few more of my liking. So I filled in the gap myself, with what I wanted. What I was hoping for.
Simple Twists
Want me to buy more tracks from Beatport? Then, give me a sample that I’d like. As I pointed out, I already began to identify genres, styles, labels, and specific artists I am interested in. Use what’s known. Leverage the information that the consumer has provided to influence future engagement. It’s certainly simple enough to pull that insight and deliver the consumer a more customized, enjoyable experience. Ultimately, the ten songs wouldn’t have made me buy more, but it certainly might have impacted me in the long term, knowing that they’re investing their time & efforts into features that actually relate to me.
The bottom line is, expectations abound, and online, when the consumer is not led to water by person, but instead by their own twists and turns, extra care has to be taken in setting those expectations, or designing with our consumers potential expectations in mind.
Now, off to Beatport to pick me up some good music!
