Trust in a Box

In April, I will be one of 11 groomsman at a wedding in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. One groomsman lives in Seattle, one in Phoenix, I live in Austin and the rest are in NYC. The groom wants us all to wear matching tuxes. Luckily, we exist in an era of optimization — there is probably a service that meets this need. Go figure, a search for “online tux rental delivery” returns 4 options.

This is a good opportunity to explore a core principal of UX: trust. Specifically, how are elements of design used to gain brand equity to the point that I would use the service on my wedding day, or go as far as asking my wedding party to do the same?

Here are two to compare:
Option 1: The Black Tux (BT)
Option 2: Generation Tux (GT)

As expected, both of these services are similar enough in their basic business model: choose a tux, it comes to your door and you send it back after the event. I am comfortable ordering clothes online, so by association, I trust this model. But the devil is in the details.

I gravitate towards The Black Tux. Why?

On the GT homepage, I am met with a chatbot message describing their service. Before the page finishes loading, I’m stressed. It’s like the guy at Best Buy asking if you need help when you just want to browse. When I visit BT, I see splash photos of the product in action. On some level I must be thinking, “It worked for them, it must work for me, too.”

When evaluating a service that I have never used, my first question is always the same. How much? On BT, my answer was in bold on the front page, “starting at $95.” That’s enough information to give me a ballpark idea. On GT, I found my answer two pages deep, with a baseline price and a list of add-ons. Confusingly, I find a separate page with a different price point altogether.

Even though I know the outcome, the wording GT uses to describe the steps is vague: “organize your event, create looks, get fit, receive and return.” Still, my anxiety about using a tuxedo delivery service is not addressed — what happens if the suit I get doesn’t fit? BT takes this crucial step into consideration with phrases like “try it on” and “check the fit.”

Trust is about information. I am able to evaluate the risk/reward factor and, in turn, become a customer with sites that use transparency to describe their services.