When Bad UX Takes Money from Customers (aka @CafePress Steals Money From Cancer Patient)

Case Study: When Bad UI/UX Takes Money From Customers @CaliforniaKara | spamkara@yahoo.com | CaliforniaKara.com Kara DeFrias

Puppy! (ProTip: Start with cute to relax audience.) http://www.flickr.com/photos/californiakara/5808083147

Background After getting cancer twice in one year (thanks, 2010!), decided to create a t-shirt to sell to folks – with the intent of splitting any profits between my medical bills and a charity. I made the shirts on: This case study tells the story of my experience with the CafePress website – and how I’ve never seen a penny from the sales of the shirt thanks to a poor user experience (UX) design and confusing user interface (UI). Full story on http://bit.ly/cdCafePress

Task: Make a t-shirt. Where would you go?

Chose “ Design your own ” to make the tee

“ Design your own” flow

“ Design your own” flow Yay! Shirt created. I can Add to Cart! Within 24 hours: 137 “Likes” 

Time to tell everyone! Within 24 hours: 137 Likes on Facebook and folks retweeted to over 75k users on Twitter With shirt created, I made a short URL, posted to my site, Facebook & Twitter

Friends began buying, and telling me

No sales/profits showed in CafePress account  $

Reached out to CafePress Customer Service Asked why I wasn’t receiving commissions, when I knew sales had been made. Their response: Asked how many shirts had been sold from that URL. Their response:

Reached out to CafePress on Twitter

She tried! While she was very nice and wanted to help, her answer ended up being the same:

Where I was told I was *supposed* to go Unfortunately, as you can tell in the screenshots, that’s never made clear in the UX.

So what’s next? http://www.theclevelandfan.com/images/stories/dead-end-sign.jpg I’ve hit a Dead End with CafePress. Now I’ve got to tell my friends and family, “Thanks for buying the shirts, but I didn’t get any money from it, actually.” It seems like CafePress could’ve done the right thing, but chose not to.

Contact Info: @ CaliforniaKara spamkara @ yahoo.com CasaDeFrias.com | CaliforniaKara.com

When Bad UX Takes Money from Customers (aka @CafePress Steals Money From Cancer Patient)

by Kara DeFrias on Jun 23, 2011

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When Bad UX Takes Money from Customers (aka @CafePress Steals Money From Cancer Patient) — Presentation Transcript