[JonoBB]

I'm really not quite sure what to make of this advice: http://thehipperelement.com/post/86991518680/daily-ux-crash-...

> If your marketing department wants to know anything about why the user is cancelling, put it in the form. Two pages of boring questions is a great way to reduce conversion.

> Break the form into many pages so it takes longer. Include links to FAQ pages. And avoid using defaults; it maximizes the number of conscious choices for the user.

> Ask them to explain their reasons for cancelling, and require at least 100 letters of text. Explaining is hard when your reasons are emotional.

Really? Obviously I don't want to make it too easy for users to cancel, but to make it too hard just seems petty to me. Asking them to fill out the reasons for cancellation is a great idea (and worked really well for us), but forcing them to write at least 100 letters is just horrible.

Also, there are some users that you really do want to cancel. You know, the ones that suck up twice as much support as anyone else and complain incessantly.

Surely its more important to be focusing on why users are cancelling, not luring them through a maze of "two pages of boring questions"? Does anyone reputable actually do this?

There is a sweet spot somewhere in between, but this seems to be irritating and would just make me want to write complete junk responses.

[thejosh]

"Designers, if you call yourself a “UX Designer”, you’d be the dev who called themselves a “Variable Declarer”."[0]

Anyone who thinks they are a UX Designer who wants to make the cancellation process as hard as possible obviously has a very shitty product if the only way to retain your users is to try and make them fill out forms with minimum values. Really, 100 characters? "aksfwejfjwefjwewefj" will be all you get, you evil shit.

[0] https://twitter.com/iamdevloper/status/448918439793815552

[digitalengineer]

I think there is a difference between a designer and a UX designer. I meet both kind regularly. The designer is still print-focused and can't wrap his/her head around the fact it's no longer possible to force how something should look. They think 'the look' is what design is about. Often they work from their ivory tower and their idea of communicating is 'sending the PSD'. This kind of designer (and agency) is going the way of the dodo but they still exist.

[joeyspn]

> I think there is a difference between a designer and a UX designer.

Then your vision of the design world is quite simplistic. Having studied both CompSci and Design Engineering at college, I can tell you that design can be very complex, and the term “Designer” is as abstract as “Computer Scientist”, where you have distributed systems researchers, back-end devs, Ops, database administrators, release engineers, QA Engineers, and thousands of specialities.

The design field is HUGE (go and visit IDEO), ranging from mere Graphic Designers (what you've reflected as "PSD Designer"), to UX/UI Designers (those building human-computer interfaces ), to Design Engineers and Industrial Designers that have a solid base of engineering (physics, maths, materials, CAD/CAE, ergonomy, etc) and are able to shape tangible as well as non-tangible products.

Leading Designers [0] usually belong to the latest group... Pininfarina (Ferrari's Designer), Philippe Stark (who worked closely with Steve Jobs crafting his Yatch but also does graphic design and a lot of other design specialities [1]), Jony Ive (leading the iDevices industrial design but also the UI), Dieter Rams, etc.

[0] http://images.businessweek.com/ss/10/02/0201_worlds_most_inf...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Starck

[thejosh]

Yep, I feel very lucky to work with a designer who actually cares about UX, has a very good knowledge of how HTML/CSS actually works and everything that goes a long with that.

Made hiring a frontend person much much easier.

[protonfish]

I call those people "graphic designers" to their faces to be clear they are not UX designers, but make pretty pictures. Behind their backs I call them "web decorators."

[JoelMarsh]

On second thought, I might agree with you. I have added a note to that article to clarify.

[thejosh]

Sorry, the tone may have come across overly crass, but this is a topic that really irks me when people can't unsubscribe without a whole lot of BS.

[silverbax88]

Cancelling a service should ALWAYS be easy and painless. I make sure all apps/services I have are just as easy to cancel as they were to sign up.

I actually find that about 50% of people who cancel end up coming back. I also have NEVER had a user contact me about how to cancel their account. They just do it. No problem, no interaction, no bullshit 'let me talk to you first' run around.

If you are trying to keep people from cancelling by making it difficult to do so, YOU ARE BAD AT BUSINESS.

[JoelMarsh]

Author here.

I agree. After a few minutes of after-thought I have updated the article to reflect this feedback.

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the input.

[tommi]

> Also, it should NEVER be difficult to cancel. Just time consuming. And to be super clear "time consuming" to me is about 5 minutes.

As a user, I hate you for that.

[nakovet]

Indeed. I cancelled Netflix 3 times, and look who's back paying for their content!? Me!

Not the main reason, but because it's easy to cancel it, I don't worry about signing back (counter-example: gym subscription).

[silverbax88]

I stated this above, but because I have a policy of pain-free cancellations, I get about 50% of my cancelled users back WITHOUT HAVING TO DO ANYTHING.

[dovel]

I agree with this sentiment.

Here's some UX for you - the user owes you nothing.

Sure have an optional form or field for cancellations but 5 minutes? How is this beneficial for anyone?

So, it's a free product - they will just never cancel their account and you will have inactive users sitting there. Who is this good for?

So it's a paid product - they will cancel their account and tell everyone about the ridiculously long winded process they had to go through to cancel it.

[wtracy]

... or they'll just dispute the recurring credit card charges for your paid product, and you'll get your merchant account frozen after a few "cancellations".

We can argue over whether or not the original suggestion constitutes fraud, but the credit card companies will definitely treat it as fraud.

[dovel]

The post you had here before you edited was completely nonsensical.

A UX post, on how a site should prevent users from cancelling to benefit the website, at the expense of the user.

That is the opposite of a good UX.

Here is some 'User pseudo-psychology' for you... Having your blog titles take up more than half the vertical space of my browser (when it is full screen) stops me reading your writing.

[Arnor]

I'm glad I checked the comments to see if this was worth my time... question answered.

[fat0wl]

ha yea i read the first few sections & they were so hollow i had to come check the comments too -- good UX is not putting a bunch of filler in your opening 10 paragraphs. Only thing thats been said so far is that "3-click rule" that my 900 year-old boss spews to management after raving to me about how much he loves the Mac philosophy.

XD

In all seriousness, would love to see a guide from the more scientifcally-researched vein of this type of work.