The Dropdown Menu Sinkhole
Have you ever stopped to think about the logic behind drop down menus?
I can’t stop thinking about them.
I’m referring to those ones that ask you which state and country you live in.
Why isn’t the United States the first option?
I don’t mean to sound ethnocentric but, how many Ugandans are signing up for online water bill pay in Salt Lake City, Utah?
When the drop-down menu appears, USA is nowhere in site. Pressing “U” gets me to Uganda but the United States is still, much of the time, hidden below.
I was opening a bank account at Deutsche Bank two days ago. The teller was inputting all my information (why my hands are not able to enter my information is fodder for another post).
He fumbled his way through 8 different “Country of Residence” drop down menus in the process. It added a solid 5 minutes to my visit…and I missed the train home by 2 minutes.
As I waited for the next train it dawned on me. Drop-down malfeasance is costing humanity, in total , hundreds of hours of time each day.
Some quick guesstimation — If 1,000,000 people fill out their country of residence in some form online each day, scrolling down to “USA” takes an extra 5 seconds. In total, that’s 5 million wasted seconds or 1388 hours or 57 days.
57 days of wasted time, each day.
Okay, enough ranting — here’s the point.
Companies and people care to get the little stuff (that’s actually not so little) right stand out from the pack in meaningful ways. Stealing meaningless time disrespects the customer and by extension their relationship with your company.
Here’s the other point.
