The power of PayPal… why I couldn’t be arsed to sign-up to Spotify (yet)

Published by Ewan on Wednesday 17th June 2009, 07:40 Comments | Filed under: Observations

“Ah hah,” I thought, “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll upgrade Spotify to the premium version.”

I’ve been meaning to this for a while. I’m about to go to bed — I’ve got it playing me some seriously relaxing classical and the ’shit, let’s upgrade!’ thought came into my head.

I clicked the upgrade button.

Arse.

They want a credit card number.

My credit card is… 9 steps away.

So I’ll do it tomorrow.

If it was PayPal, I’d have click-clicked and been a premium subscriber.

I find this insight absolutely fascinating. Obviously in the time it’s taken me to write this post, I could have stood up, walked over to my wallet, took out my card, typed in the number. But the fact I didn’t speaks volumes.

It’s a stunning service, Spotify. I will definitely become a premium subscriber. Indeed I’m feeling a bit guilty that I haven’t actually done so yet, I get such value from it.

The point of this post, though, is more a note-to-self. If I’m ever going to do an online service that requires you to buy via the web, I’ll aim to make a PayPal option — every single time. Whatever your view of PayPal, it is literally two clicks and you’ve got my money — and I’ve got my login/software/whatever.

I wonder how many other people visited the Premium Upgrade page and reacted in the same way as I did?

Is it really that bad? I’m rather shocked that I’m reacting in this way. I just can’t be bothered to go and get my credit card right now…. and that’s all that’s standing in the way of me subscribing? Dangerous. Very dangerous if you’re an online business.

Anyway.

If you haven’t checked out Spotify, you should. Right now. It’s at www.spotify.com.

Me? I’ll sign-up tomorrow.

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  • Moof
    Ah, but as you're about to find out, Ewan, Paypal deals with multinational citizens badly.

    In the name of Fraud Prevention, they lock an email address to a particular country. So if, say, like me, you have bank accounts and associated cards in three different countries, you find that you need three email addresses to really be able to cope with that, and remember which is which. And woe betide you if you want to pay for something with an English card and have it delivered to your residence in Spain. Let alone if you try to register a UK bank card with a Moroccan statement address...

    I'm a real person. I know plenty of real people who travel as much as I do. But I apparently closely resemble a fraudster, so Paypal want to make my life difficult. If I try to complain, they just ignore me, after all, 95% of their customers aren't difficult the way I am...

    No, I tend to find not using paypal brings about less confusion.
  • Ewan - How lazy are you?!

    Probably about the same as everyone else...I'm working on an academic and commercial research project on Pervasive Computing and what you've highlighted in your post is one of 4 ways I measure pervasiveness. Broadband and wireless networks are soaking into our lives and these apps are becoming more and more pervasive...but what exactly does that mean?

    Measuring the number of physical steps or actions you have to take to complete a task is one way to measure the distance between you and your goal (e.g. 1. get up, 2. go and get your credit card, 3. enter data into four fields (about 23-25 characters), 4. click the submit button). The end result is that for you, a PayPal payment is far more pervasive (a single click) than this Secure Code payment (4 steps and typing ~23 characters). This has broad branding implications as it means PayPal makes you feel much closer and more connected to your goal.

    It might sound like you're being lazy...but this type of distance can obviously be measured even during the prototyping phase and can be designed into the product/service and business model from the ground up. This and our other 3 measurements are a way of designing your product or service directly into people's lives.

    I'd give you some links to the academic background but you're probably too lazy to read them 8P
  • Loving Spotify, but ...Visa/Master Card's SecureCode is one of the worst transaction/implementations ever.

    I suspect Spotify wasn't happy with having to pay PayPal whatever % that they expect for the use of the service. That said, Master Card and Visa charge, too. So, who knows.

    Whatever the reason, it doesn't change the fact that SecureCode sucks. #fail.

    @iboy
  • Entirely agree. You know what, George, I'd have paid the PayPal percentage. Charge me 11 quid a month. Or 12 a month. Whatever. I just wanted to point and click and be done with it!
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