Why Wiltshire Farm Foods is sponsoring Silver Surfers' Day
Posted in All posts, Tech Tips and Top Websites, What We're Up To
Hello, I’m Matt Curry, and I’m the webmaster of http://www.wiltshirefarmfoods.com. Wiltshire Farm Foods is a sponsor of Silver Surfers’ day, and we’re proud to be associated with such a worthwhile cause.
Wiltshire Farm Foods provides nutritionally-focussed ready-made meals, delivered frozen to the door. We pride ourselves on service, trust & reliablility – but how does this translate online?
I attend a lot of online events and forums, and I’m repeatedly amazed by my peers who don’t consider the over-50′s to be online, let alone to put enough work into their website to accommodate them! We’ve been running http://www.wiltshirefarmfoods.com for several years now, and whilst yes, it has been a challenge, we passionately believe that we can provide a friendly, safe & risk-free environment for people to try out their first online shopping experience.
As I write this, I’m in a Usability Session. We’ve had several test users come in, to try out out website and see what we’re doing right, and more importantly, what we’re doing wrong. This is what I’ve learnt.
- Users never click the wrong thing – they click what they think is the right thing, it’s the website that is wrong.
- Reassurance is the key. The internet is quite a scary place if you’re not familiar with it.
- Build a relationship with your visitors. I’ve often spoken directly on the telephone (and occasionally, we make house calls!) – the level of service you provide online should be equal, if not better, than the service you offer offline.
I repeatedly urge my peers to respect elderly web users. We have a saying at Wiltshire Farm Foods – “With Age Comes Wisdom” – age & wisdom are 2 things money can’t buy! There’s certainly a level of life skills and experience that the over-50s have that younger audiences don’t. Celebrate that.
I’m looking forward to SIlver Surfer’s Day, and look forward to greeting new online visitors on Friday!
Matt
May 13th, 2009 matthewcurry | 4 Comments »
Tags: online shopping, websites, Wiltshire Farm Foods
May 13th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Matt, thanks for all the support and the wise words.
There are SO MANY businesses who could learn from your attitude to and experience of the older online shopper: it always amazes me how naive businesses can be about going that extra mile – it’s not just good practice, inclusive, instructive. It’s also ultimately about the bottom line. You could say that’s cynical, but as it’s a fairly key business concern, it would be better thought of as practical, prudent – just plain obvious.
As one of my good friends at ERoSH(http://www.shelteredhousing.org/) once said, and I requote her endlessly (as it applies to very many things) ‘throw bread on the water and it will come back cake’.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
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May 14th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Well said Matt. As a Wiltshire online shopper I can confirm that you generally get it right. I particularly like your No.1 learning point, as a guide to web design for the older user.
May 15th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
[...] McCarthy & Stone. Each of the corporate sponsors has written an interesting blog post, here: http://dnc.digitalunite.com/2009/05/13/why-wiltshire-farm-foods-is-spons oring-silver-surfers-day/ and here http://dnc.digitalunite.com/2009/05/08/mccarthy-stone-offer-25-ssd-event s/ about why [...]