Usability Issue, The Free Egg Disaster of 2010 | The Terralever Blog

Since business fan pages have gone on the rise in the last year or so, there have been some great campaigns focused on gaining fans for those businesses. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there has been a large amount of businesses offering FREE goods to consumers in exchange for their fan-ship. I mean, who wouldn’t simply click a button and become a fan for a free bag of Oreo cookies? I did. I still don’t have my cookies, but all I had to do was become a fan. So, the time and energy investment for me was low while the outcome could possibly, maybe, fingers-crossed, be high for me and my family. No loss there. But what happens when these campaigns go bad and the experience leaves a bad taste in consumer’s mouths? Social media backlash. Companies typically want to avoid social media backlash of any kind. It’s quick and painful and it’ll hit you in the face before you know what’s coming. So, to avoid this, a social media campaign needs to be thoroughly planned out. If a campaign is poorly planned and managed, it can create a horrible experience for all those involved.

Let’s use this mornings Incredible Edible Egg (IEE) disaster as an example. Being the frugal consumer that I am, I heard through my online money saving network that starting at 10am EST, IEE was offering a free BOGO (Buy One Get One Free) coupon to the first 30,000 people to become fans. Simple, right? Click a button. Fill out a short form (which was pretty much filled out for you). Click submit. Coupon is emailed to you shortly thereafter. FREE eggs. So exciting!

Now, I have to tell you that as an experienced “become a fan” promo goer I am typically not optimistic about these sort of things. 30,000 coupons sounds like a lot, but when you’re dealing with a pot of over 350 million active Facebook users only 0.08% of them are going to get the coupon. I can pretty much guarantee you that if it was promoted well, there were probably over 30,000 people patiently waiting at their computers for the clock to reach “go time.” Everyone loves free stuff. Especially in this economy. So, chances were that I was not going to get a coupon, but I gave it a shot anyway. I figured I would have my answer in a few seconds and be able to get on with my day either way, right? Maybe not.

Here was my IEE BOGO coupon experience and an example of how things can quickly go terribly, terribly wrong.

At about 8:10am MST I clicked on the link, went to IEE’s Facebook page and became a fan. However, instead of being taken to the coupon sign-up page, I get this:

Now, because I work in, on and around the Internet all day long, it was clear to me that IEE hadn’t planned for all 30,000 (or more) users hitting their server at once. But to the average everyday Facebook user the experience is perceived much differently: The Incredible Edible Egg is broken. They hate me. They ran out of eggs. They scammed me. It’s a fake promotion. Really, they’ll come up with anything and they’ll tell people about it. This is why it’s best to avoid these perceptions completely.

So, I headed over to their fan page to check out the status of things. Their wall was already filled with comments from angry coupon-less deal goers that were being turned away by their server issues. Within 10 minutes they had hundreds of wall posts related to the promotion. Most angry, some calm and a few funny ones that included the expected egg related pun like, “Well, this didn’t go as EGGspected” or “Looks like the yolks on us.” Har har.

What’s amazing is that, even though they were angry, some fans were still trying to get their coupon 3 hours later and posting about how much of their day they’d wasted trying to get this coupon. They must really love eggs.

In attempt to keep diffusing the situation, IEE had been posting updates every now and again asking people to be patient, but at this point the damage had already been done. The experience IEE provided had not fulfilled fan’s visions of 12 free eggs all nestled away in their fridge for future enjoyment. And trust me, there’s no easier place to express your anger than a forum where you can post your feelings and run away with no consequences. Especially when you get a mob of people doing it at the same time. And it all stems from the fact that users feel entitled to receive what you said you were going to give them and it’s completely unforgivable if they don’t get it. Especially if it’s free.

So, when moving forward with a simple social media campaign like this, make sure you plan out every minor detail. Make sure that the user’s experience is fast, simple and easy. Let them get in and out without any hassle so that they are compelled to leave a positive message on your fan page and possibly even pass along your promotion to their friends through their many social media avenues. You want and need them to pass it on to make your campaign more successful. And ensure that you plan for worst case scenarios so that your promotion doesn’t die within the first two minutes of its launch.

I’m sure that IEE will recover from this incident. They’ll get the system working again and will probably have to give all of their fans coupons, well beyond the 30,000 they originally intended. Once they do that, everyone will be happy again and IEE will be able to live a more enjoyable existence. But, with better planning and guidance IEE could have saved themselves the heartache by doing it correctly from the start and keeping everyone happy all along.

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