New Gift Account Walk-Through

Yesterday I gave a gift account walk through and came across some challenges that I thought were important to share. Let me start by saying that the new card editor and video that go along with it are incrediable. The feedback that I got was that the video made it very easy to follow along and do the essentials needed to send a card. I too watched the video with a critical eye and found that it was rather straight forward and didn't get to far away from the real power or sending a card, and demonstrated how easy it was to click, type, click again and away your card went. Bravo SendOutCards, you've made it much easier for me to demonstrate this to folks.

With that, I did notice some things that I didn't anticipate before giving the demo.

First, when giving a demo on someone else computer, be aware that the computer they are using, may be different than yours. This could mean, and probably will mean, that your machine is faster than theirs. This happened to be the case for me yesterday. My laptop is fairly new and the screen pretty large, so I'm use to moving through the new card editor pretty quickly. The new card editor and GAWT is much more processor intense, which means it takes more computing power to run. My suggestion is don't mess with the unknown. If your not sure how your potential card senders computer will perform with the video playing, do the demo on your computer. That way your at least playing with a known entity.

The second thing I noticed was that the more you set it up before the demo the more prepared your sender will be. You know that your going to be sending a card before you start the demo, so it makes sense to prepare them a little so that they at least have an address ready. So get them ready by telling them that they are going to be sending a card and to start thinking of who they might send a card to and know where that card is going. So planning is really important.

The last piece of info is the closing. I found that making them aware that they have another FREE card to send is really important. I also spent some extra time explaining Picture Plus and how that can be incorporated into the process. I found it extremely beneficial to show the user how to change fonts, change colors, and adjust the fonts and colors in the middle of the text. I explained the contact manager and how automated reminders can be setup.

All in all my walk through went really well, I was able to sign up this user and expect big thing from them in the future. But I thought it was extremely important to understand that giving a demo on a system that isn't yours is a crap shoot. Turn the tables in your favor by doing the demo on something your familiar with. This goes for doing things over the web as well. If your user might not be capable of using GoToMeeting, then your best bet is to walk them through it in person. Plus who doesn't like a little personal attention.

Don't forget to send that user a thank you card for spending some of their valuable time with you. I recently heard chocolates are nice!