Tuesday, August 9, 2016

-Sticky (26) When your website thinks your brand is a mispelling

Some ideas stick, others don't. I am a student of ideas, products, slogans that stick. Today I ran into a series that don't. I realize readers prefer positive and upbeat; so do I. But when you run into something that is -sticky, (not sticky), it can be instructive to understand why.

At SANS.EDU we use Grammarly on student papers to ensure a certain degree of objectivity. And it works pretty well, or at least did until it didn't. Today, for some reason, I can't load the robot copy editor. 

I looked all over the website for a contact us, or support link; it might be there, but I could not find it. On a whim, I wrote support@grammarly.com and got an answer back almost immediately with a canned note and trouble ticket number.

After I returned from the gym, there was a support URL. Went to the support site, it is mostly a FAQ GUI. Found a place to report the problem.  When I put in a subject line for my report the interface marked Grammarly as a misspelling, (note the red squiggle in the graphic). Calling your brand a misspelling on your own site is humorous, but not sticky.


And I am back to where I started, with the same canned email from Grammarly with a new support number. To be continued . . .


Stephen Northcutt is Director of Academic Advising for SANS.EDU and chairperson for SANS Rocky Mountain 2017, Denver, 6/12/17, please mark the date.