Open letter to David Allen

Posted by Kevin Stirtz on February 11, 2010

0 comments | 635 reads

I am a fan. I really am.

Your GTD model is brilliant yet practical. It works! And I like that you focus on helping people have a better life. That’s a much more compelling message than “time management”. Clearly you’re a bright guy with the best of intentions.

That’s why I can’t understand why you’ve allowed your website to be designed the way it is. The experience it offers does not at all what I expected after reading your book. It’s beyond frustrating.

Specifically, I’m referring to the Free Articles portion of your site. (The rest is fine.) Here’s the problem. It’s inconvenient and difficult for people to benefit from your free articles because they’re in a secure shopping cart:

Putting a BUY button next to a free product is confusing. But it gets worse. Your shopping cart is (at least in my experience) cumbersome. It took me several attempts to get it to work. It wasted my time.

Most free information on the Internet is easy and convenient to acquire. You just point and click. Some requires registration. But most is as frictionless as our current technology will allow.

When you put roadblocks between your visitors (also known as customers) and your product, you increase the odds they’ll leave and not come back. I understand free means they don’t pay. But free also means you’re building an audience. The benefit of free is you spread your ideas and goodwill to more people.

But putting your free articles behind a clumsy shopping cart changes things. Because when you charge a visitor the price of time and hassle you’ve just increased their cost of doing business with you. Your free products are no longer free.

If your intent is to share your ideas, spread the wealth of knowledge and build your community, then your current Free Articles page is not helping. It’s hurting.

The good news is, your fix is simple. Remove the barriers. Make it easy and convenient for people to acquire your articles. Then they can move on to others things, like getting better at Getting Things Done.

Sincerely,

Kevin Stirtz
The Amazing Service Guy

Kevin Stirtz

Kevin Stirtz is a web marketing consultant. He uses SEO, social media and local search strategies and tools to help businesses attract and keep more customers. He is a Certified Inbound Marketing Professional and has written two books about marketing and customer loyalty. Kevin lives in the Twin Cities metro area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN.

About Kevin Stirtz |
Connect:

Categories:

Customer Experience

635 reads
Print
Email

0 comments »

Post new comment

Your name: *

E-mail: *

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.

Homepage:

Subject:

Comment: *

Input format

Filtered HTML

Allowed HTML tags: <a> <img> <hr> <table> <tr> <td> <th><ul> <ol> <li> </li><blockquote> <colspan> <rowspan>
Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

Post

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
Images can be added to this post.

More information about formatting options

Notify me when new comments are posted

All comments

Replies to my comment

CAPTCHA

No spam permitted! Moderator reviews ALL content before publication to ensure compliance with the CustomerThink terms of use.

To block automated spam submissions, please answer this question.

What code is in the image?: *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

MarketPlace

Drive customer loyalty, empower support teams, and reduce costs. Get social.

[Feb 22] Guest speakers from Forrester Research, Allscripts, and CustomerThink will discuss market trends and research on social customer service strategies, as well as proven tactics from the trenches. Join the live webcast on Feb 22 at 10am Pacific (1pm EST).

Global Customer Experience Management (CEM) Certification Program

[March 13-14, Paris] An internationally recognized program with proven track record of success - being run for 33 times in 13 cities with attendees from 50 countries, the program is developed based on the U.S. patent-pending Branded CEM Method which aims to drive customer loyalty and brand differentiation with quantifiable business results. Limited offer: USD300 early bird discount.

10 Steps to a Single Customer View

Linking customer data across department databases and business units improves business intelligence, customer profiling, and customer management. This paper outlines 10 steps to improve the quality of customer contact data, including physical mail, email, and telephone information.