When You Assume...

Are you putting yourself in your customers' shoes? If not, you're throwing away sales every day.

Here's a good example. Yesterday I purchased an upgraded subscription to an online service I use. I noticed that they offered the ability to turn off the "auto-renew" feature, so that my credit card wouldn't be automatically charged for another 6 months at the end of the term.

I thought that was a good and ethical thing to do, and so I chose that option. Next thing I knew, I was seeing a page that said they were sorry I'd chosen to end my subscription, and that I'd still have access for the next 6 months.

I thought I was simply choosing a payment option that appealed to me, and they were automatically assuming I wanted to cancel, minutes after I upgraded my subscription!

Instead, they could have shown me a page thanking me for changing my payment preference and assuring me that they would send a reminder email when my 6 months was nearly over.

Look at your site and make sure you aren't making similarly bad assumptions about your customers' intentions.