The ECommerce Prenup

Tom Spring reviews his experience trying to cancel online services. It would seem that some etailers view their customer relationships as either "till death do us part" or as a hostage standoff. Either approach is pretty detrimental to trust or to good word of mouth.

Recommendation - if your business model includes subscriptions or regular reordering, give users an option of a one-time orders (you can always ask for another order later, say via email), very gently persuade them on the benefit of the subscription, and give them a "Prenup"that explicitly describes how to easily cancel. Sounds a little frightening to billboarders and dead-tree marketers, but if you do the conversion-rate math it will start to make sense.

Thanks to Mark Hurst at Good Experience for the original link to this article.