Usability Hell

Soundcloud is a pretty cool service - which is why it pains me to write this.

I don’t use it much & wanted to unsubscribe from their emails. I wasn’t expecting a Lord of the Rings 4 part epic.

All emails should simply have 1 click ‘unsubscribe’ button at the bottom.

For the record unsubscribe shouldn’t be formatted like this:
click here to unsubscribe from our mailings
(you d****)

but like this:
unsubscribe
Get a clue.

Anyway - this is where the saga begins.

What I Want

1. To Unsubscribe

What I Don’t Want

1. To login and ‘manage my messaging settings’.
2. To have a warm fluffy chat with you about how your life is doing and what your thoughts on your relationship with me are.
3. You to try and stop me unsubscribing by making the process a f****** 10 minute game of ‘lets make nick piss about like a twat’.
4. To fool around behind the bike sheds or come home and play video games with you.

I don’t give a f*** about your site or my messaging options. Just let me unsubscribe for the love of f**** God!!!

Here is what happened

Step 1
I click ‘manage my messaging options’ or whatever - just to be dumped at a login screen.

I never use Soundcloud - that’s why I’m unsubscribing - therefore *I don’t know my login details* doh. There is no good reason to make me login here.

I click ‘forgot password’

Step 2
I get an email from the Soundcloud weatherman, WTF?! I bet you think thats like kooky & a bit zany right! I don’t want zany, I want unsubscribe!

But instead I get ‘Manage notifications’. FFS.

Step 3
There’s no ‘stop spamming me’ check box. It actually makes you manually select every single f****** thing I don’t want to be emailed about. GAAAAAAAAAAa.

Just to make me think more & complicate things further there are a series of random drop down lists too.

Step 4
After all that pissing about I notice this hidden on the right:

Yet more messaging settings. Do I need to go in there too? I don’t know, this isn’t clear (<a bad place to be).

Look - it doesn’t matter who you are or what your site does - and Soundcloud is better than 99% of sites out there. Most people don’t give a f*** about your website.

If someone wants to unsubscribe - let them do so in 3 seconds - not 5 minutes. Time is precious.

No one is going to hack into people’s emails and secretly unsubscribe them. There’s no security risk here. But there is a risk that you’re gonna royally piss people off, who will endup hating you, writing posts like this - and will be less likely to come back.

Remember - most of your users wont come back. Take them into account.

Every email list should have 1 word, 1 click unsubscribe. The End.