Think Before You Share That Screenshot

As web designers, we work with a number of businesses that offer various types of hosting. One of them specializes in WordPress hosting, emphasizing on their website that everyone at their firm is a “WordPress specialist.”

Fair enough. If you’re going to make that claim, however, you should be careful what’s in the screenshots your support specialists share with customers. To verify that our site was back up, we were sent this screenshot:

Screen Shot 2013-04-24 at 1.28.06 AM

When I saw this, my eyes immediately went to the bookmark bar, where I saw several “learning WordPress” type resources and links to a payroll system. If I were in charge of that support department, I would ask everyone to turn off their bookmark bar, because those links seem to imply that this specialist is not quite a specialist. I’m also reminded that they’re tracking their time, and I’m not sure that as a customer I want to be reminded of that!

Whether or not my assumption is true, it’s still probably best not to share those links with your customers. If you take lots of screenshots for customers, I’d suggest turning off your bookmark bar (and only having one tab open).

Raymond Brigleb

Creative Director, dreamer, partner, father, musician, photographer. Has been known to ride the rails. Pulls one heck of a shot.