I need to get this out of my system... it's a rant about a poor experience I had recently…
I recently started a relationship with a reputable money management company. I’m paying them to manage investments and recently they gave me a login for their web site. Each time I log in, I get more and more frustrated… and here’s why…
After I log in, the marketing language and brochure-ware increases dramatically. On the first page after login is titled “About Us�? and proceeds to spend about 500 words telling me (A CURRENT CUSTOMER) about the company.
Irksome point #1: I am already a customer- my money is spent. I don’t care about you anymore…I only care about one thing- and that is the balance of my account.
So I set out to find my balance from the About Us page and I see some links at the top of the page. The only one that remotely makes me think “Account Balance�? is the “Member�? link- which takes me to a “Member Services�? page.
Irksome point #2: Why would the link say “Member�?? I am already logged in, which pretty much ensures that everyone who sees the page is a member. And “Member Services�? is a separate page? I am already logged in- member services should be the ONLY page.
I get to the Member Services page and see a drop down menu for the various things you can do in “Member Services�?. It contains only two options- Edit Profile or Account Report. They spend about 50 words describing how to use the drop down menu.
Irksome point #3: If you’re spending time describing how to use a tool on your site, maybe you shouldn’t use it. It should be intuitive or not be there at all. Don’t use a drop down menu for two options if HTML links could accomplish the same thing while being much more intuitive.
So finally, I find the account balance. I bookmark it so I can just login without going through all this mess. As it turns out, the page expires and I can’t bookmark the page (maybe for security). So, I’m stuck going through multiple pages to get to the single thing that interests me.
I emailed the company and told them about my experience and disappointment. I encouraged them to look into the top 3 reasons customers log in to the web site and make those 3 things incredibly easy to do immediately after logging in. I hope it helps.