Be Attractive, Offer Simplicity

By Edahn Golan

It’s a new year. Some make New Year resolutions, others look ahead with hope. For many it is a time full of promise and most of us make silent little prayers for the future. So do I. I’m praying for simplicity.

If you think about it, what could possibly be a more audacious demand from our life, and those that supply its wrapping. We live a complicated life that is becoming more complicated by the day, especially if it touches on economic or technological issue. As a kid I used to admire my dad for being able to describe to me the inner workings of a car and its engine. In fact, what really impressed me was that he and his friends knew exactly how it worked, understood not only the mechanics but also the theory, the physics of it. It seemed like they were a generation of knowledge giants, leaving me with the impression that my generation could not match them.

When I grew up a little and started to look at cars a little more closely, I realize that the simple combustion engine they knew so well is a much more complicated engine today. It has computers and sensors, electronics and gauges that were not there before. It became more advanced, more sophisticated, more complicated! The same goes for my generation. I used to be able to take a part a PC and reassemble it blindfolded with my hands tied behind my ears. Why? Because I knew exactly what part does what and how. It was simple.

My son might be as impressed by me as I was by my father. He, however, will have to deal with very different computers. Advanced, sophisticated and complicated…I’m not complaining. Really. Better cars stand at our service as do better PCs. So what if a layman can’t fix them on his own with a simple set of home tools and self-taught knowledge. The problem is when we take something simple and for the sake of developing it we make it unnecessarily complicated.

As we develop more advanced systems, tools, websites, even marketing campaigns, we often make them unnecessarily complicated. It is easily done. If you want to cover all bases, give your customers “everything”. We create many options and the result is clutter. Point in case: the blinking 00:00 on a VCR. The only reason a person does not set it is because it’s not obvious right off the bat how to do it.

There is no need to go as far back as VCRs since they are making way for DVDs. I recently got a new cell phone manufactured by a very well known company. I tried to figure out how to use quick dialing for a bunch of phone numbers I use often. This is a common feature and you would expect it to be easy enough to set, especially by a guy who plays around with technology all day.

Nope. It was not straightforward and very quickly became frustrating and annoying. The result: I do not have very positive sentiments for the phone maker. Ah ha! That is a very dangerous proposition for any marketer. In the name of making something better it was made worse and created ill will on the part of the consumer. At least two very technologically oriented acquaintances voiced similar complaints, so it’s not just me growing dumb because of the cold weather.

We are all competing for the consumer’s attention, trying to convince them that we offer the product they want. I walked by a caf? stand outside one of the major diamond exchanges. A sign invited me in for a coffee and danish for the cost of a coffee alone. Shaking off the morning chill I stepped in. So far, good marketing. Then I waited to order my coffee with two other people, while four workers kept running behind the counter too busy to attend to us. It was fascinating to see how busy they were, but doing really very little. It got complicated. In the end there were no danishes, I was served with two coffees, neither of which were my order and I left deciding not to return. A simple proposition that drove a client away…

We can easily find ourselves creating the same feeling among our own customers. Be it in our retail stores, our websites or our marketing campaigns. I fell in love with Google not just because of its good results (it could be much better) but mainly because of its simplicity.

If we create something for a consumer that requires an action on their part it has to be a two or three step process, and very straightforward: enter your email, press enter. That’s it, you’re subscribed to a newsletter. If you expect a visitor to run around, fill forms, answer questions, click buttons, go from one page to the next - you are expecting TOO MUCH!! You have news about your company on your website, make it reachable in one click. You have a campaign - spell it out clearly: “30% Discount on All Rings” or “Buy a Diamond Ring, Get a Silver Spoon” (and please not some unnamed present. If you think it’s not exciting enough, it will become a turn-off, and you are disappointing your customers).

Complication is all around us and the last thing we want is to add to it. Become attractive by offering simplicity.