I recently went to see Marty Supreme with my boyfriend. The movie was great. But before the lights even dimmed, Regal served us 42 minutes of car commercials, local promos, and coming attractions we didn’t ask for.
I left the theater thinking less about the film and more about what that experience said about how Regal views its customers. Not as guests. As an audience to monetize.
There’s actually a name for this trajectory. Corey Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe the slow drift where companies stop serving their customers and start harvesting them instead. Once you notice it, it’s everywhere.
The most powerful thing a brand can do right now is simply respect its customers’ time. When you make things easy, you build a kind of trust that marketing can’t buy.
This is especially worth it when you’re a small business. You have the ability to make every interaction feel personal, intentional, and worth someone’s time.
Respect Compounds
When your customer can find what they need quickly, book an appointment easily, and get an email that reads as if it came from a real person, they notice. That feeling is what turns a first purchase into a second one.
Here are 3 things you can do today to create a more frictionless experience for your customers.
- Make your website fast and obvious: If your site takes more than a few seconds to load or buries the most important information below the fold, visitors will leave before they ever get to know you. Make it fast and make the next step obvious.
- Simplify your contact form: If you’re asking for more than a name, an email, and one or two qualifying questions, it’s too long. Every extra field adds time.
- Reduce unnecessary steps in your booking or checkout flow: Count the steps it takes to complete a purchase or schedule an appointment. If you can remove even one or two steps, you’re giving customers their time back.
Need Help Getting Started?
If you’d like help taking a closer look, a Customer Experience Audit is a good place to begin. At Sweet Rose Studios, we help small businesses map their customer journey, identify where people are dropping off, and make the changes that actually move things forward. Contact our team today to get started.
