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Comment by danilocampos | Hacker News Reader

Shiny is an aesthetic description. The importance of this discussion goes much deeper — simplicity versus complexity, and who benefits from each.

Upsells are an obstacle to completing your purchase. They're annoying. They are added compexity that has a nominal chance of benefiting the user. In contrast, they are guaranteed to benefit the company, since as a numbers game, you'll end up pitching enough upsells to convert n additional sales.

When considering the impact of adding complexity, imagine a toilet. Or, rather, your access to a toilet. Some toilets are a door knob away. Others require you to hunt down a coin and drop it into a slot before providing access.

Which toilet are you more proud to have in your business?

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Your assertion that all upsells have a 'nominal chance of benefiting the user' is wrong. Some users love upsells if they are the right deal.

This is really quite an easy problem to solve. Run the upsell. If only a small percentage of users go for it, throw it away, since it's probably doing more harm than good.

I no longer use godaddy, partly because I got tired of wading through their ridiculous number of upsells. There's got to be a balance.

You're talking to a former salesman here — the art of the virtuous upsell is a delicate bit of work that takes time to practice. For humans. Very few ecommerce companies give a damn about doing the algorithmic legwork necessary to upsell "the right deal."

Even Amazon, the crem de la crem in ecommerce IT magic, doesn't often nail it for me. They get away with it, though, by being respectful to me. No interstitial horseshit, just a respectful suggestion that doesn't ever detract from my main activity — buying the things I am certain I want.

You can make money by surprising your users — Google made billions doing this with AdWords. It works for them by being good on a pretty solid basis and never being in the way when it isn't.

> When considering the impact of adding complexity, imagine a toilet.

A bidet and a toilet with toilet paper. I'd find a bidet confusing and awkward.

Upsells are useful. You make the assumption they only serve the company. This is wrong. Take for example the last upsale I purchased. I bought a Kindle. Amazon upsold a case for the Kindle before the checkout.

Apple pushes upsales all the time as well. I challenge anyone to go by a Mac in an Apple store, and try to buy it without having to mention to have the sales person discuss MobileMe, AppleCare, or OneOnOne.

You make the assumption that upsales are annoying and are obstacles. That's not true. The design of upsales can be made an obstacle or annoying, but then, I could argue the same about anything. Heck, I could take a blank page and turn it into an obstacle.

GoDaddy. Come on.

I agree on Amazon, they do their upsells in a great way that isn't distracting. They don't say "Hey, fuck you, user, can't complete the transaction until you consider this offer!"

By and large, though, don't split hairs with me, how many people are doing upsells right?

edit: Bidet complexity is significant, but the benefit is that your asshole is clean and fresh without needing a shower. Which is extraordinary, but obviously only for power users. But that's a different UX kettle of fish.

> GoDaddy. Come on.

I don't use GoDaddy. I wouldn't know. Why bring them up? As evidence that upsales can be done poorly? I never contested that. You did say that upsales are annoying complexity, obstacles to a purchase.

> By and large, though, don't split hairs with me, how many people are doing upsells right?

Most every place I frequent does upsales well, whether offline or online. I find good upsales a reason to frequent.

People doing upsales right? Apple. Amazon. Ebay (considering your not just buying something, but customising a service). DomainSite, the company I purchase my domains from, does the upsales easily without impeding the checkout process. Choose domain => shopping cart => checkout => Payment info. Along the way, options are provided, but nothing that gets in the way. Also, just now checking, those steps all fall in the same visual area on the page, so you're eyes are already where it needs to be for the next step. Not sure if that's intentional or not.

Regardless, upsales aren't bad. Bad design is still bad, however, one has nothing to do with the other.

Too bad that last paragraph doesn't fit in a tweet, it's worth quoting again and again. :-)

I'd find a bidet confusing and awkward.

Seriously, can anyone tell me what is the correct way to use a bidet? Do you sit facing the wall, so you can control the temperature and volume of water? Or do your try to adjust all that first, and then sit facing out as with a toilet?

The traditional bidet has a variety of severe UX problems as evidenced by the universal confusion over a number of issues on first use.

The old style european type is designed such that you should be facing the controls. Which is only reasonable when you think about but requires a non-intuitive posture.

There are now electronic ones which integrate with a toilet and provide a control pad.

Don't indulge yourself with a bidet as they can be habit forming.

>The old style european type is designed such that you should be facing the controls.

What's confusing, same way you use a toilet.

;0)

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