Actually, the online almost anything. Doc, for those of you who don’t know of him, was one of the co-authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto. I read that when it was published in 1999 and it forever changed the way I looked at markets and so much else.
Be that as it may, Doc spent what appears to have been an inglorious day yesterday trying to renew his online subscription to the Wall Street Journal. WSJ vs. Subscribers Unsuccessfully? Successfully? He’s still not sure! Anyone who has ever felt the frustration of trying to buy something online through overly cluttered and totally useless forms will appreciate his post.
Doc’s right. We can certainly do better. And, that’s the collective “we” not the idiots putting together the online forms. But what I continue to scratch my head about is why we are willing to put up with this and still part with our money? Clearly, what we deem as useful content and our access to it, will take precedence over our discomfort with the buying process. You’d think the news organizations, given their rapid demise, would have figured this out by now.
