Night Apes Dream

Before I begin, I should probably point out that I think Worpress is a fantastic service/product. Anything free is good, and Wordpress is not only free but also great. However after spending a good part of my week struggling with some of the aspects of getting it set up, it couldn’t help but think that my hopes had been set a little high with their “famous 5 minute installation

After briefly hosting Night Apes Dream on the Wordpress.com site, I decided that it would be better to purchase my own domain to house it. As a free blogging service, Worpress.com is fantastic, I was able to quickly and easily set up a customised online presence and begin publishing. However I wanted to be able to implement greater changes to my site than Wordpress.com allowed, and also desired my own URL to allow greater expansion down the road should I need it.

I had no expectations that using Wordpress.org’s software would be as simple. Despite working in a web based industry, my technical knowledge is somewhat limited, and although I had a basic understanding of how hosting, CSS etc worked I had only limited experience with actually working with it. I figured this would be a good way to teach myself the necessary skills as I hosted my own site.

Arriving on the Wordpress.org site, I was assured that the process would be a simple and painless one. The instructions described “three easy steps…to start blogging in minutes”, and how I could “download and install Worpress with our famous 5-minute installation”. This encouraged me, perhaps it would be closer to setting up my Wordpress.com account than the difficult process I had anticipated.

Ahhh, not so much

Whilst I didn’t find the process of hosting and setting up Wordpress impossible, it was a long way from the simplicity they describe on their homepage. The steps involved were quite technical and not always obvious or intuitive.

What struck me at the end of the process was not that it was difficult, but that it was a lot more difficult than how it was sold to me. I came to the process expecting to have to invest an amount of time and learning into it, and for my first attempts to probably not end in success. However Wordpress assured me that this would not be the case, so when my initial expectations eventuated, I actually found myself getting quite angry and dissapointed with the experience.

Judging by some the comments I read online, I was not alone. A lot of other user’s frustration stemmed not so much from the fact that the process was far from simple, but that it was a long way from the simple process it was described as on the Wordpress site.

I wonder if mine and other’s reactions would have been different had Wordpress not described its installation as so easy. I went into the process expecting difficulty and frustration, had Worpress said “difficulty and frustration await you, but the rewards are great. Here is the information you will need to complete your difficult and frustrating task, now go forth” I would most likely have continued. And when things got difficult I may not have become so frustrated, but instead reminded myself that this is what was expected, and to stop whinging.

Wordpress is not alone in falling into the trap of making things sound easier than they really are. How often do we see “Click here for instant access” only to find a lengthy and often unnecessary registration process. If your site says that it’s only “three simple steps” to complete whatever they need to do, make sure it really is only three steps (and make them simple!). If users are prepared for the process ahead of them, they will be better equipped to complete it, and more likely to persevere through any difficulty they experience. If you set your users up with false promises of how simple your processes are, they are likely to become frustrated and disenchanted, and to give up.

I may have said users are stupid, but let’s face it, they’re not. Let users know what they are getting into, give them the respect to make their own decision, and you may see your abandonment rate go down.