saw something that has always been a pet peeve of mine with regard to
ecommerce sites.
Lets say you walk into a store. Any brick/mortar one will do. You then
browse for merchandise, pick a few things up and walk up to your
register... money in hand.
However, before the clerk takes the money you are holding out to them...
s/he asks for your username and password so they can log you in. Sure
hope you remember it otherwise you'll have to go to the customer service
desk and ...
This has always struck me as a critical error in online store design.
You have a customer standing, waiting to hand you money, yet you (not
just you, personally) do something that impedes that critical flow of
money from their wallet to yours, and potentially could torpedo the sale
if they forget their login or somesuch and decide the login retrieval
routine isn't worth their time.
I have never understood this. On my stores when a user clicks
'checkout' they go straight to the secure checkout form, which contains
all address and credit card info needed to complete the transaction.
Step 1 of 1, if you will.
Further, on that checkout form the user is given the option to 'remember
me' so they don't have to fill out the form next time they visit (it
remembers via cookie values, and doesn't store cc info of course).
If I need to collect info on my customer base, I do it some other way
than making them set up an account. In other words I make it my problem
and transparent to customers.
Like I said, pet peeve. Ecommerce is a tough row to hoe as it is and I
think you have to work extra hard to make it super easy. My suggestion
is: decide whether you *really* need a login, and ask yourself how you
can make checkout a literal breeze to get thru. Rip it down to its
barest components to be sure that, once you get a customer to the point
of buying, there are no roadblocks in the way.
--------------------------------------------
Matt Robertson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
MSB Designs, Inc. http://mysecretbase.com
--------------------------------------------
-----Original Message-----
From: Bailey, Neal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2004 10:26 AM
To: CF-Talk
Subject: RE: Marketing / Design ???
Kevin,
>Looks good to me. Satisfies the "did it do it?", "did it do it right?",
and
>"what do I do next?" questions quite nicely.
- Great thanks... I want to make this very user friendly to the
customers.
>Just a couple little things I noticed though:
>1. On the customer registration page, the asterisk on the zip isn't
red.
- Thanks it's fixed now.
>2. You could possibly streamline the address information. There's a
customer
>address, ship to address, and billing address. You ask if the ship to
is
the
>same as the customer addy, but don't ask the same for the billing.
- Hmmm not sure what you mean here. Are you talking about making a "same
as
billing" button or the credit card form?
>3. After placing the order with the fake cc, I got a page saying "If
you
>receive an error message or email from us stating that your credit card
has
>listed as invalid, it has most likely listed as invalid for one of the
>following reasons:" I'd suggest putting a header on that page saying,
>"Credit card problem." or something. Looking at the "If" that starts
the
>page, I don't know if it's saying the order probably went through but
maybe
>didn't, or if it's saying there was actually a problem.
-Yeah that error page is work in progress. I just stuck something there
for
now. I am working on displaying the message that comes from the
merchant.
And I will make the page more appealing with directions on what to do
depending on the message code that I comes back. In your case the
expiration
was not valid.
Well thanks for looking site over... we are getting pretty excited on
the
re-opening next month.
Neal Bailey
<http://www.blissfulessence.com/> www.BlissfulEssence.com
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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