I promised I’d follow up on the “white border issue” some of you raised regarding our new digital certificates, and even though several of you responded to my last post on the topic requesting a full-bleed version, we’re still a bit gun-shy about doing so.
Here’s why: any time we make a change to one of our programs or offerings, we have to think about the impact on customer experience at a broad level. We know that there will always be some percentage of the community dissatisfied by any change we make, but we place our bets on satisfying the broad majority.
I just came out of a meeting where we discussed the digital certificates and looked at several examples of the printed ones, and there was a consensus in the room that:
1) Switching from the white-border version to a full-bleed version would create more dissatisfaction than it solves, because we believe relatively few people would have both the proper hardware and the knowledge to print edge-to-edge correctly. (We could provide printing instructions, but not everyone would read them—or could read them, since the site isn’t fully localized.)
2) Adding a full-bleed version in addition to the white border version might cause confusion among users who don’t understand the difference between the files—and those users might exceed in number the users who are capable and knowledgeable enough to print the full-bleed versions.
On the first point, I fully agree. I don’t think switching files is a good option for us to pursue.
But—on the second point, I’m unsure. We know that edge-to-edge photo printers are becoming much more prevalent, but we don’t know what percentage of our community has ready access to them—and our thinking would certainly be influenced by that knowledge.
So—even though I asked a similar question earlier, let me ask again, more specifically:
Thanks for your feedback! Still following up on the charter issue, btw—and the shipping costs for printed certificates should be available shortly too.