It’s timeworn advice: Make it easy for the customer. Be easy to do business with. Staples has driven it’s whole brand image around that easy button. And, like most advice, it’s correct a lot of the time. But I was watching my wife install some software recently (yeah, we really know how to have fun as a couple). and it occurred to me that there’s something more fundamental than easy that we need to focus on first.
You’ve all seen the screen I am talking about. It’s the one near the beginning of the software installation process that says, essentially, “Do you want to do the standard installation or the customized one?” Or “Do you want the easy button or do you want to be in total control?” They don’t always use the same words, but they basically are trying to ask, “Are you someone who just wants this to be easy or are you picky about what we do with this install?”
And, at first glance, that seems like a perfectly reasonable approach. But I don’t think it is. Oh, sure, it’s reasonable for the folks that want the easy button because they are incapable of anything more, but what about for those plenty capable of performing the customized install? Just because we are able to do it, does that mean we have to?
Well, yes. You see, there’s no information about what you get with the easy install. It could be that I am perfectly happy with the easy install, but I will never know that because all I am told is that it’s easy. I’m not told what I actually would get.
And this, folks, is the problem with easy. Easy only works if it’s perfectly clear that the right thing is being done. When the right thing is being done, then of course you want it to be as easy as possible. But if you care about the right thing being done, you shouldn’t be sentenced to the hard way. Now, understand that I am not looking for all the details—just a basic understanding of what features the easy version gives me vs. what I miss out on.
It’s like the fast food places where you go in and order a cheeseburger and they say, “Do you want everything on it?” Now, it’s easy to ask for “everything” but what does “everything” include? If you don’t know, that isn’t an easy question at all. Now the reason that this can work is because you have repeat customers who learn what “everything” is.
Software installs have no repeat customers, we hope. You install it once and then you don’t do it again until the next release (which has a different installation process anyway, most of the time). So there’s no learning here. There’s not much value in an easy button where I don’t know what I’ll get when I press it. It’s only useful for people who are incapable of deciding any more than whether to press the button. Yes, I want to help those people have an easy experience, but I like things to be easy, too.
Ask yourself if what you’ve done to make things easy for your customer are truly easy. Is it totally clear to the average customer what the easy option does? Or is it the marketing equivalent of “Trust me”? Think about whether you can simplify the experience without obscuring what the customer gets.
