How Should You Express Disappointment in a Product?

[CoreyFreeman]

This has been bothering me for a while now...

For about two years I've been raving about a certain premium theme. They recently went live with version 3.0. The entire theme framework has been rebuilt and recoded from scratch to run faster and offer more flexibility than ever. Just one thing...

It's kind of a major disappointment to me. Let me explain...

• I think the new interface is bulky.
• A lot of essential features have been removed.
• The theme jumped onto the HTML5 formatting wagon which is kind of making CSS a pain
• There's actually a loading screen between editing modes, for no apparent reason, as opposed to simply toggling features on and off on the fly.
• The columns system has gone away, which means for faux columns I'll have to go back to using a background image, and I mainly design blogs
• It's generally just been a pain in the *** to work with...

I see the potential in the theme, and given that I'm an expert in this field with great credibility and a history of actually dominating the niche, suddenly starting over from scratch would be bad. But clients are going to want to use the "new and improved" version over the super awesome 2.13 version which means consulting newbies on doing things that are a pain in the *** and doubling the build time for projects...

Do you think I should jump into the support forums and voice some of my suggestions or just "suck it up" and find work-arounds? Another problem being that I know the co-founder personally and he can get kinda defensive. I'm really not good with email/forum wars and I don't want to lose face with my customer base.

Thoughts?

[Starog]

Given that you're expert, you'll know what you're talking about. Surely people will understand your problems with it and trust your opinion on it because you're so skilled at it? So when you do voice your opinion, you're in a strong position to do so.

Twitter seems to be a good way these days to get things out there. A tweet with the right use of the hash tag and the right key words could get round without much effort. It's surprised me how my tweets have gotten to people.

Support forum is a great way also.

I think there has to be a balance struck when voicing your opinion about it, especially since you say the co-founder is a bit touchy. You know say stuff like, "the theme has come along way and is personally one of my favourites (even if it's not). Great design and usability but the recent update seems to have moved it back rather than forward, which is a great shame because I'm sure like many others, I see great potential in this theme."

"One great thing about the theme was how easy it was to use but the current update has made it appear bulky and difficult to work with"

etc. You know what I mean? Compliment then state problem. Flattery gets you everywhere. If you just say "everything is rubbish, I hate everything", then the co-founder will just knock you down and be offended. But you if compliment him, he'll like it and (hopefully) he'll at least listen.

I've found this method very successful in getting what I want. You aren't really complaining as such in their eyes, you're saying what a great product they have and suggesting a few things that could make it better.

[ReX]

You should voice your opinion. I wouldnt of thought being an expert in the field or not should even push you to your decision. If the theme is not what people want or what there looking for then they should express their opinion so they can change/update to what people do want.

[Mcfroggin]

Originally Posted by Starog

Given that you're expert, you'll know what you're talking about. Surely people will understand your problems with it and trust your opinion on it because you're so skilled at it? So when you do voice your opinion, you're in a strong position to do so.

Twitter seems to be a good way these days to get things out there. A tweet with the right use of the hash tag and the right key words could get round without much effort. It's surprised me how my tweets have gotten to people.

Support forum is a great way also.

I think there has to be a balance struck when voicing your opinion about it, especially since you say the co-founder is a bit touchy. You know say stuff like, "the theme has come along way and is personally one of my favourites (even if it's not). Great design and usability but the recent update seems to have moved it back rather than forward, which is a great shame because I'm sure like many others, I see great potential in this theme."

"One great thing about the theme was how easy it was to use but the current update has made it appear bulky and difficult to work with"

etc. You know what I mean? Compliment then state problem. Flattery gets you everywhere. If you just say "everything is rubbish, I hate everything", then the co-founder will just knock you down and be offended. But you if compliment him, he'll like it and (hopefully) he'll at least listen.

I've found this method very successful in getting what I want. You aren't really complaining as such in their eyes, you're saying what a great product they have and suggesting a few things that could make it better.

+1. Good points that everyone should learn.