As we’ve come to expect from any new Apple product, the iPhone 6 was released to a chorus of commentary — some adulatory and some critical. For all the attention that the new phone and operating system have received, no one is talking about the elephant in the room: the grueling process of choosing a plan for your new mobile phone.
I recently experienced endured this process firsthand, as I set out to look for a new carrier. What I found was scary. Every time I sat down to look at plans, I ended up drowning in open tabs. I hunted down details in complex tables and accordions, dodging modals and pop-up windows. Inevitably, I’d get so frustrated that I’d shake my fist and close my browser with the loudest click I could muster—trying to slam a virtual door on the sites that were putting me through this ordeal. The experience of shopping for a mobile-phone plan was so painful that I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It’s no wonder that there are dozens of articles doing the math and comparing plans so that consumers can make sense of it all. It’s time we bring this long-overlooked usability issue to light, and see how we can make the experience better.
To understand how widespread this problem was, I looked at the websites of phone companies worldwide, including those outside the United States. Sadly, performance was about the same around the world.
Five Reasons Why Shopping for a Mobile Phone Plan Is Painful
When I began shopping for a plan, I was looking forward to a new phone and a new, more flexible carrier. A new plan would mean a new beginning, a fresh start. I was excited, but my joyful anticipation was short-lived. Below is my list of usability issues and how companies can fix it.
1. Finding a list of plans is difficult.
The first step was to find a list of the plan options (this should have been the easy part). On nearly every phone-company’s homepage, there was a clear call to action to either Buy Now or Learn More about the iPhone 6. But, I didn’t want either of those: I wanted to see the plans. I wanted to know the monthly costs and what data was included. But the links to the phone plans were not descriptive and did not include keywords that shoppers relate to.
For example, on AT&T’s website it wasn’t even clear how to access the mobile plans. To many people, the label Wireless (under which the plans lived) implies wireless internet, or WiFi— especially on a site that also sells internet services. What saved this label was the use of a mobile phone icon. (It’s rare that icons support understanding of a label; usually it’s the other way around.)
Furthermore, once on AT&T’s Wireless page, a list of plans still wasn’t immediately apparent. As someone unfamiliar with the company’s plans, none of the options seemed to show me a list of plans for individuals. In fact, to get to a page that listed all the plans, I had to click on the image above Voice and Data Plans. While it’s good that the image is clickable, and it’s great that the site offers a landing page for the full category, the image doesn’t look like a link. (Missing category landing pages is #3 on the list of top-10 IA mistakes and if the user can’t tell that a feature is there by looking at the page, the feature might as well not be there as far as the vast majority of users is concerned.)
Recommendation: Use a clear link label to lead users into the comparison task. View All Mobile Plans, for example, would be much easier to discover and understand.
2. Pricing was unclear and hard to compare.
Prices were either hard to find (in the Virgin Media example below, they weren’t even listed) or they were couched by small print explaining additional fees and future price hikes. This uncertainty about pricing made it that much more difficult to compare the features and benefits of different plans. While it is recommended to be transparent about costs, often the inconvenience of calculating those costs is placed on the consumer.
In our research, we see users struggle to hunt for extra costs. If people don’t see them right away, they assume the website is hiding them somewhere. In recent testing for a website selling multiyear service contracts, a user expressed relief when he finally found a table showing the price difference during the promotional period versus the remaining months of service. Users feel overwhelmed and powerless when they suspect that your site hides key details, and upfront disclosure is one of the rules of communicating trustworthiness.
It’s a balancing act to provide details without overwhelming users. But it’s essential if you want customers to get a quick and accurate picture of your offerings. Your content should answer more questions than it asks. Use progressive disclosure to inform without overwhelming: fine points that not everyone needs to know can be delegated to secondary pages or hidden under accordions.
Recommendation: Use comparison tables or other designs that facilitate side-by-side comparison. Highlight the differences between the plans, especially the prices. Users appreciate transparency, even if it means showing a higher price. If an exact price cannot be provided, show an estimate or price range. Consumers can handle the truth; they know that phone plans are expensive. What they shouldn’t have to handle is the burden of doubt about whether the company is truly upfront and discloses all the costs.
3. Branded jargon and technical terms are confusing.
Jargon is ok on sites with narrow audiences that speak the same specialized language, but it doesn’t belong on broad-audience sites such as those of mobile-phone providers. A sample of plan names from various mobile phone providers in the US, Canada, and Australia illustrates just how opaque these names can be:
- SharePlus
- My Plan Plus
- Unlimited, My Way
- PayLo
- Personal Shareable Plan
These labels all sound pretty much the same, and they don’t carry enough meaning to help users remember what each one entails. For users trying to keep track of complicated plan details across multiple providers, these branded terms increase users’ cognitive load and strain their short-term memory, while they try to retain the information that matters to them most.
Another issue common to mobile phone provider sites is communicating the value of the varying levels of data (GB). Many users don’t know if they need 1GB, 4GB, or unlimited data. Some sites offered multistep wizards that recommended a data allowance. But most users don’t use such tools, because they take time and effort to get through. People just want information fast and with the least effort possible. Instead, sites should translate data-plan limits in terms that users can relate to (for example, how many minutes of video streaming are supported by the plan).
Recommendation: Use descriptive labels instead of relying on (or in addition to) branded terms. Include plain-language descriptions of the plans’ benefits alongside the list of plans and prices.
4. Pop-up dialogs interrupt the experience.
On several websites, a chat box appeared — unsolicited. While the websites were trying to be helpful, in reality these overlays often appeared at the wrong time and obstructed important content. They interrupted users’ efforts to learn about the plans and made it harder for them to remember what they were looking at, and caused them to have to dismiss the dialog to continue.
When I was shopping for plans, I used the chat feature a few times. But it was on my own terms, when I sought it out. Unsolicited pop-ups are one of the most hated web design features: just say no.
Recommendation: Don’t let chat boxes or other pop-ups appear without the user directly initiating the action. Dialogs and overlays that obscure the page content should only be used when the system requires the user to make a decision or to alert the user of something important.
5. Shopping for big-ticket items online requires more attention, concentration, and time.
When users want to shop online for an expensive item such as a house, a car, or a two-year service contract, they spend more time researching their purchase beforehand. Research shows that for costly products, the actual purchase may occur many days after the initial visit to a site. Shoppers start researching, they get distracted, overwhelmed, or simply run out of time, so they stop and continue on another day. In my case, I made my purchase 10 days after my initial visit to a different carrier’s site, partly because I just wanted the ordeal to be over.
This is also why you want to measure more than just conversion rates: Tracking the number of visits it takes to convert is an important report in any analytics strategy.
Recommendation: Avoid making frequent and significant changes to your website. Because many users return to a site over time while they research their big purchase, it’s important that the site remain largely the same, so that users don’t have to relearn everything. (While I was researching plans, one site changed dramatically. I had to refer to my previous screenshots to reassure myself that I wasn’t crazy – yes, the site had been completely different only a few days before.)
Maybe Going to The Store Would Have Been Easier
In preparing this article, everyone I spoke to recalled their own experiences comparing plans. Almost all of them told me that I’d be better off just going to a store and recommended to not even bother with trying to decide online. Maybe I should have listened to them, but I like the no-pressure, no-waiting-in-line-to-speak-to-a-salesperson part of online shopping. Yes, signing up for a phone plan is a big decision, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done online.
It’s sad that multibillion-dollar corporations have such negative brand reputations that most people believe in advance that their websites will fail. Why are mobile phone plans so difficult to research online? Two reasons:
- Bad design that ignores the many well-documented guidelines for website usability.
- Inherent complexity: when the plans themselves are complex, even the best user interface can’t make them truly simple to understand.
The first problem is simple to solve: do user testing, believe the data, fix design flaws.
The second problem (overly complicated plans) is a good example of why the total user experience is more than just user-interface design. The underlying business offerings also need to be designed with a view to their usability and explainability.
When I finally made my decision, I felt relief. Now I can move on to researching other more interesting (and hopefully less aggravating) topics. But I am also glad that I went through this and was able to shed some light on a user experience that is continuously overlooked.
Hopefully with this article, websites that sell big-ticket items online will work towards clearer links and labels, transparent pricing, plain-language benefits, and fewer interruptions to an already complex experience.
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