I just bought a book, Making Ideas Happen, from my local Waterstone’s bookshop. However it was £9.99 and a whole penny shy of their £10 limit to get a loyalty card stamped I missed out on getting a stamp closer to a ten pound token.
Slightly aggrieved, and perhaps with some buyers remorse as I sat down to read a chapter from the book in the local park with an ice cream I wondered how much it would have been be online. I fired up barcode scanner and was soon at Google Books where I saw that Waterstone’s own online bookshop was selling the book three pound cheaper at £6.99. As some shops do a collect in store service, I thought I’d visit the site and see how easy it would be to order online on my phone and then pick up in the local shop so next time I can support my local bookshop, but still benefit from a discounted price.
Google Books
Including Waterstone’s at a cheaper price. So I visit their link…
But they want to promote their app…
and subsequently don’t serve the page I want, losing a potential sale.
You Shall Not Pass
Unfortunately they put a big roadblock in the way of this particular journey on the information super-highway and push a promotion for their app to me. That’s all well and good, but once I get past that promo page I don’t then get to see a page about the book I’m interested in.
I’ve not only been road-blocked, but now shoved on some diversion away from my intended destination.
Journey’s End – The Moral of the Story
Promote your apps to mobile users, but don’t forget that your users are trying to complete a task. Don’t make it harder for them to buy from you, after all a competitor is only a click away; and in this case I could have bought the book using the Kindle App on the phone and saved a further quid!