Radiohead disappoint (but not for the reason you might think!)

 – posted October 23rd, 2007 by Clodagh Kelly     No comments

Just under 2 weeks ago Radiohead made headlines by making their new album “In Rainbows” available by digital music download and allowing their fans to choose how much to pay for it. I was willing to pay a reasonable amount for the album and for the convenience of being able to download it, but a bad user experience made it difficult for me to part with my hard earned cash!

My attempt to buy the album

As a lapsed Radiohead fan I thought it was time to give them another chance, I’d heard good things about the album and was interested in their “pay what you think it’s worth” payment model. So a few days after the album came out (to allow for the fuss to die down) I took myself off to their website and encountered the first obstacle - the site is done in flash so if you don’t have flash installed, you have to install it. OK, not a big deal, once I got past the introductory splash screen, this is what greeted me

Seems straight forward enough right? There’s the big huge download button. Well, it turns out no, that’s not a download button, it’s just a label (second obstacle).

So how do you download the album?

After some clicking around, I discovered you have to click on the small red ‘order’ button to the right of the download button. Then you can pay for it right? No again! This adds the item to my ‘basket’ and then takes me back to the screen above (third obstacle) .

At this point, to be honest I was confused, there’s no check out button, no buy button, no download button. The only options I had were ‘advice’ and ‘view basket’, I don’t really want to do either of these things but view basket might provide me with more options… so, I clicked the ‘view basket’ option, and waited, and waited…… and nothing (fourth obstacle) . The site had hung and I wasn’t impressed. I gave up.

The outcome

I was prepared to pay a reasonable amount for the album but a pretty terrible user experience and a site unable to support the (surely expected) traffic it receives just caused me frustration and wasted my time. I did manage to get the album eventually, and I have to say it’s brilliant, but I paid a lot less than I would have if the experience had been better!

Lessons learnt

So I was just downloading the new Radiohead album, maybe I am being a little harsh? Perhaps, but the reality is that a bad user experience leaves users with a negative view of your website and your organisation and may be costing you money.
So at least get the basics right:

  • Make buttons look like buttons
  • Use clear labels and call to actions
  • Don’t present your users with unnecessary obstacles
  • and most importantly, as the book says, don’t make me think!

Categories Design

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