The Scotsman has launched an iPhone app which is subscription-based and may be quite interesting (I’ll do a review once I’ve downloaded it) and it’s good to see a paper getting into the app market even if it took a good two years after apps started appearing.

But there’s a massive PR and customer fail in the paper’s article and on the website (and a sub should have spotted this a mile off)…

There’s an article on their site about the app (which I presume has also made the printed version) but one thing is missing: there’s no link in the story (this is the link). Now I know there’s only one place you can get the app, but there aren’t even instructions on that.

Now that may seem basic – why put the link in if there’s only one place to get apps and if you have an iPhone you know how to use app store – but it’s a consideration of your audience. Every barrier you put up is a barrier to sale.

One click versus four clicks & some typing:

Click on a link in the Scotsman story, iTunes opens automatically and takes me to the page of the app

V

Read Scotsman article, come out of web browser, go to iTunes, open it up, go to the search bar, type Scotsman, go through all the results until I find the one I’m looking for (and assuming I don’t see something else first that I want to spend my money on), find it and then click on the link.

Free Social Media Digital PR tip: Always think like a consumer and always think about how you can save them time and effort. The easier you make it, the less barriers there are towards completing a sale/transaction.