
Don't send me a message to tell me I have a message - darrennix
http://darrennix.com/dont-send-me-a-message-to-tell-me-i-have-a-me
======
DanBlake
Most companies doing this are not naive in their design. They want you to come
back to the website so you can read it and hopefully be lured into doing
something else on site while you are there. I agree for the PSD2HTML example
it is silly though.

Most social networks and dating sites are the biggest offenders as they want
you to continue browsing or in some cases, upgrade to pro to read the message.

It may not be 'desirable' ui/ux in the endusers view, but when its done like
that I suspect the provider has found out "this makes me more money both now
and in the long run"

I think we could just as easily see a post on HN tomorrow saying "One simple
tip to increase your email click rates 2500%"

~~~
bpatrianakos
You hit the nail on the head. It's getting very annoying to read posts by
people who get up on their high horse and proclaim "this is terrible design
and I'm shaming companies who do this"... except that's not the case. It's
just a mildly annoying thing for them but as far as the sites are concerned
this is great design. Rather than go around saying "I proclaim this wrong" we
should start saying "I don't like this" because in the end that's really what
most people are saying and they come off like dicks when it turns out there's
a pretty good reason for the "wrong" thing to be such.

~~~
pifflesnort
It's good design to provide a worse experience to your customers?

This is why I've always enjoyed Apple products. They don't perform these kind
of ridiculous mental gymnastics to justify doing a worse job for their
customers.

~~~
timr
_"It's good design to provide a worse experience to your customers?"_

Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that are
better for their long-term interests.

If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with greater
user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote user
engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather gain the
benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make all of the
people happy all of the time.

~~~
pifflesnort
> _Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that
> are better for their long-term interests._

It's telling that you're comfortable deciding on your user's behalf what is
better for their long-term interests, in a way that just so happens to benefit
_your_ perceived interests.

> _If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with
> greater user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote
> user engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather
> gain the benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make
> all of the people happy all of the time._

If you're building a product that provides greater value with greater
engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to drive engagement by
giving users value that makes them _want_ to be engaged, rather than playing
tricks like annoying them with e-mails that contain no content.

~~~
stanleydrew
This is quite ironic, since I'm pretty sure Apple is the king of deciding
what's in their users' long-term interests in a way that's actually better for
their interests.

Some examples: removal of the floppy drive from the iMac, removal of the
optical drive from the Air, removal of "Save As" from MacOS, removal of Google
Maps data from the native iOS maps app, "you're holding it wrong" response to
the iPhone's antenna issue.

Just because you agree with these decisions or the mental gymnastics required
to justify them, doesn't mean they can be ignored.

~~~
pifflesnort
Do you actually believe Apple made those choices to benefit themselves at the
cost of their users?

------
jaryd
Pretty awesome that the company the OP is complaining about has already posted
a comment in reply to the blog post (on the actual blog)...

\-----------------------

Darren,

You're right, this sucks. Looking into this now and see how this can not
happen again.

Michael La Rosa CMO at PSD2HTML.com

~~~
nemoniac
Awesome? Really? Not in the slightest.

The CMO just sent him yet another useless, contentless message.

If he had any sincerity he would have first looked into it, then fixed it and
only then replied to say that he had fixed it already.

~~~
jaryd
Not in the slightest? So the CMO gets no credit for acknowledging the mistake?

I would be willing to bet that the CMO is not in any sort of position to make
the necessary changes to ensure that this doesn't happen again, and so your
suggestion is beyond his ability. By acknowledging the customer's frustration
he lets the OP know that the company understands that this is an issue, and is
now going to make an effort to correct it. In other words, "he has been
heard".

Obviously, the comment alone is not enough, but it's a vital first step
towards high quality customer support, and probably an instructive lesson for
anybody in a service business.

------
error54
There are some instances where this is necessary though. For example, my
company has an internal messaging system and for HIPAA compliance we never
send out the message contents or subject line. But I agree with xoail, most
companies are just trying to get you back to website.

~~~
vampirechicken
Dear customer, we have a Hippa/PCI/confidential-in-some-other-way message for
you in our in-app message center. Please log in to view it. Yours, The
Management.

There, that was easy. Otherwise, just send me the message.

------
danielweber
This is often a security feature.

If my bank has an important message for me, telling me to log in to my account
to look at it is a good idea.

~~~
prg318
I would honestly be applaud if my bank or hosting provider sent any sensitive
information via e-mail.

"Switch to email. Trusted since 1971."

Sure - Email may be 'trusted' but that doesn't make unencrypted plain-text
messaging over the Internet secure.

------
mqatrombone
Sometimes that's the best way to do it. HIPAA requirements are a pain, but
they exist for a reason.

~~~
pc86
Agreed, I automatically exempt anything dealing with healthcare or finances
from stuff like this. I definitely don't want my bank emailing me customer
service messages which could contain who knows what kind of sensitive
information.

------
igorgue
Bank simple does this, it is a security measure, imagine a random person just
opens your email in your phone (most likely note secured) and reads a message
that reveals things like account balance.

~~~
noinput
I'd like to think that if a random person got ahold of my phone and was in my
email, the balance of my account is the last thing I'd worry about.

~~~
ketralnis
Perhaps, but I'd like to worry about N-1 things

------
xoail
Though annoying for the user, it's the best way to engage the user. Bring back
to the website and boost up hits, opportunities to cross-sell, upgrades, or
drive retention. Besides sending the message itself in the notification adds a
bit of technical complexity.

------
Wingman4l7
I initially felt this way about forum posts, but after reading Joel Spolsky's
take on it in _Building Communities with Software_ ,[1] I changed my mind.
Basically the reasoning was: do this and you'll never get your forum to
critical mass -- new users will just read replies to their questions in their
inbox and never come back to the forum and contribute.

He never says it's not okay to enable this functionality after you have a
solid userbase, though. =)

[1]:
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswi...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BuildingCommunitieswithSo.html)

------
gfosco
Worse: Sending me an email after I unsubscribe because I don't want your
emails, to let me know that I've unsubscribed.

~~~
pc86
Just because it's a pet peeve of yours doesn't mean it's bad design. It's
standard practice and should happen all the time.

If a user likes me enough to forward my newsletter to 60 of their friends and
one of them clicks unsubscribe because they don't take 10 seconds to read the
subject, I'm out an extremely loyal reader/customer if I don't send that
notification email.

~~~
maxk42
No, it's still a bad design feature. Having just gone through this less than
60 seconds ago, it really feels like a slap in the face from a company I
otherwise respect.

~~~
omni
Do you actually have a solution to the problem that pc86 laid out? Otherwise,
we're talking religious differences.

------
animal
My favorite is nelnet.com (manages my student loans) who emails me to tell me
I have a message, after which point I log in to the website, visit the message
center, and click on the message which starts my browser downloading a PDF
usually containing several pages of terms and branding bullshit and a sentence
or two of actual text which most of the time is nothing I needed to know
anyway. And of course the link text of the message that I click on is
something useless like "Message regarding your account".

------
agrona
I think I've only ever seen this from banks or medical organizations, where
the annoyance is a little more acceptable.

I'd much rather they send me an (encrypted) e-mail, but I understand why they
can't.

------
Imagenuity
The corollary to this is "Don't leave me a message to call you back, instead
leave me a message why you called." That way I can call you with the answer,
or handle it via a better means (email, text, tweet, etc.), or delegate if
appropriate. It wastes both of our time leaving a message to call you back.
This is in my voicemail greeting. Seems to work.

------
lwhalen
I wish there was some mechanism to allow a recipient to upload a PGP public
key, that way future messages could be sent securely directly to the account-
holder in question. Added bonus - it would bring more widespread adoption to
PGP and related PKI/web-of-trust email systems.

------
tomkarlo
The problem here is that the most reliable delivery channel (email) is not
sufficiently secure enough for a lot of situations. Worse, some users share
email accounts, so you can't even depend on the auth of the account. If an app
or service has to achieve a certain level of security, it can't rely on email
as a direct message channel - it can only really use it for notifications that
a message is available.

Contrast that with Android apps, where the app can show a notification at the
system level but then handle (or retain) the service-specific login (and/or
respect its rules about timing out the login.)

------
gaetan
I like how easy it is to follow, comment and close the tasks on Asana: \- They
send an email with the full comment/update made on the task \- Reply to the
email to send a comment and it will update Asana \- There is a direct link in
the email to “View and edit” the task or to unfollow it. \- You can reply with
“complete” to mark the task completed \- You can assign the task to a teammate
by adding him to the email “to” field. All this without leaving Gmail.

------
siculars
The only place sending an email to notify someone of a message is a Good
Thing(TM) is in highly sensitive or security conscious environments like
medicine, law, finance and the like. Where the sender must be certain that the
message is received in a secure manner, ie. over https.

------
bruth
Ha, I thought I was the only one to get annoyed by redundant messages:
[http://devel.io/2011/05/08/electronic-communication-
etiquett...](http://devel.io/2011/05/08/electronic-communication-etiquette/)

------
stormbrew
It's especially irritating on sites that delete old messages after a certain
amount of time. I'd rather opt-in to an archival strategy than have one forced
on me by a site.

------
tibbon
You have a new compliment on Yelp

Someone on Yelp has sent you a compliment!

See your new compliment

See you on Yelp,

— The Yelp Team

------
hjay
oDesk does something similar, but something I like about their approach, is
that they include the message in the email.

There is a "Click to reply" button, but you can just reply to the email and it
will reply to the message. Only benefit I noticed to actually using the oDesk
interface to reply, is that any blank lines in your email response is omitted,
while doing it in the oDesk interface keeps your formatting.

------
seeingfurther
Rackspace support does this, drives me up a wall!

~~~
alekseyk
If you are discussing something private that relates to your
account/server/network, the rule of thumb is to avoiding sending anything over
the e-mail for security reasons.

------
jjellyy
I get these from airbnb. SO ANNOYING since there mobile site doesnt work on my
windows phone and they have no native app.

------
Apreche
Don't ask me "Can I ask you a question?"

------
jonjohn84
favorite comment:

There has been a new comment posted, click the following to view the comment:
[http://www.example.com/?comment=324243&rerfer=http%3A%2F...](http://www.example.com/?comment=324243&rerfer=http%3A%2F%2Fdarrennix.com%2Fdo..).

------
Splendor
Also, don't send me an email to confirm that you won't send me any more
emails.

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stankx
Ah, the "indignant post-it note on the fridge". Works every time.

------
georgemcbay
The worst are companies with both sites and apps and they send me both an
email notification and an in-app notification for every fucking thing. And so
now I've got multiple notifications going off on my phone for exactly the same
actual event just in different formats (one notification letting me know I got
an email about a change on the site, one notification from the app reporting
the same thing as the email is). And then throw a digest email on top every
day or so and the notifications quickly start spiraling out of control. I'm
looking at you Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

Granted, I can usually disable one or the other or both but it is a pain that
I have to and I wouldn't even mind the notifications if I didn't feel like I
was being assailed by them at times.

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OGinparadise
_Sending me an email to tell me that I have a message with a link to actually
read the message is unforgivably bad design.

I don't want to:_

Why not? It's "unforgivably bad design" only if enough people don't click,
browse and sign up for services. Who cares if they annoy me or you? It's a
numbers game, thy don't need to please everyone. As the bad pitch goes"...if
we only get 0.1% of users to..."

~~~
_sh
_It's "unforgivably bad design" only if enough people don't click..._

I understand your sarcasm, but 'good design' is an aesthetic, not a metric.

[edit: on second thoughts, I think I may have over-simplified things. Is 'good
design' purely quantifiable?]

