Open Letter to a Broken Website

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am writing to inform you that I hate your website.

Maybe you think that nobody actually uses websites nowadays — what with Facebook and all — but I use yours, and it totally sucks.

Why do I feel strongly enough to write you a letter?

Well, for the one thing, I had a problem with my bill the other day. And I had to navigate my way through approximately 50,000 pages of content just to submit you an email.

(If you count the multi-factor security page that total would be 50,001.)

Believe me I tried not to bother you. I did. I went to the Community Forum-slash-Knowledgebase to see if there were some answers there.

But nope, nada, nothing.

I tried to use your Chat function but it seems the Chat hours are only 9-4.

It said that you have telephone-based customer service too. But you know how telephone customer service is, right? Usually totally frustrating.

In case you wanted to know what I thought of the “Splash Page” on Page One of your website: Love it!

Really, I do.

I wanted to know that you have at least four or five new and interesting projects going on right now, and that they take up almost half the page they’re so important.

It’s also great that your overall design is so incredibly spare.

So spare, in fact, and so much white space — I almost didn’t see the “Help” link.

But it’s a good thing you had it at the bottom of the page — way down, maybe, way below where I would have thought to look for it in the first place — but fortunately, there it was.

It would have been nice to access your webpage from my mobile device, but that totally didn’t work.

And I didn’t really feel like searching for an app with your name on it.

Sorry if this hurts your feelings, Company, but there is more to selling a shiny high-tech service than the snazzy service itself.

Much more, in fact.

What I wanted from your website was a way to tell somebody, quickly, that I needed some help to fix an error — not my error, mind you, but yours.

So please fix your website.

Right now you’re limping, and I didn’t sign up to spend all that money every month to pay for your broken leg.

Sincerely,

Me

____________

All opinions my own.

– By Dannielle Blumenthal, Ph.D.