Things I Hate
One thing I hate are payment processors or gateways that duplicate the checkout flow. So, you’re on AcmeCo’s website, you fill out their checkout form, then you’re sent on to PaymentCo, which asks you to fill out a second set of checkout forms before sending you back to AcmeCo. Oh, I hate that. That impacts the user experience and introduces way too many steps into the process. However, the reason this happens is frequently because the people who run online stores aren’t programmers, and they’re just using some existing shopping cart. And here’s the rub: most shopping carts are developed by people who don’t use them in a production environment. You can’t really do a good job of developing something that you don’t know how to use, right? Too bad most shopping cart developers don’t seem to realize that.
Accounts. That’s another thing I despise, to be frank. When I walk into the local 7-11 to buy a burrito, the clerk doesn’t need to know my whole life story, all he needs from me is the $1.35 I owe for the burrito. He rings up the sale and I’m out the door. In an ideal world, nobody would have to create a bunch of accounts and then try to remember all the passwords and stuff. However…this isn’t the ideal world. The problem is, again, how existing shopping carts interact with payment processors or gateways.
The biggest interaction issues are frequently things like sales taxes, shipping, and bookkeeping. To most payment processors, the only thing that really matters is handling the money–they don’t usually provide good reporting tools, shipping calculators, or tax tools. So, you can’t always depend on PayPal, 2Checkout, or whatever service you’re using to deal with it, and you have to collect the sales metrics, calculate shipping, or do the tax calculations yourself. That means you end up having to collect information from the customer in your cart anyway, simply so the cart can record the bookkeeping variables and handle the sales tax/shipping calculations. That sucks because it impacts the user experience.
The other interaction issue is that people are generally very bad about keeping their emails and addresses in PayPal up to date. You could let PayPal pass that information to you and not collect it yourself, but a lot of times, the information PayPal sends you will not be up to date. The email address might not even be in use anymore, or the physical address might be out of date. So, you can’t trust that data, you have to collect it just to make sure you’re not shipping to somebody’s old address that they forgot to update. That sucks and impacts the user experience.
Long story short, it’s 2011 and online shopping is still inexcusably sucky. So…what to do?
I was making a payment on a cruise when I realized that even though I’d input the zip code, I had to input the state. Totally redundant. You may well be on to something, but, I’m afraid programmers and managers all too often regard the customer’s time and effort as having zero value. Then, they wonder why they’re losing customers. You’re on to something.
Ooops. I’m anonymous up there.
OK, now I’m book shopping and I have to login again after every “add to cart.” Mr. Roe, get your programming done stat!
I don’t like the fact that after you approve a payment in PayPal, the business can go back and add charges to your PayPal account without asking permission.
I have had this happen a number of times. Sometimes it was an honest mistake when they calculated the amount wrong the first time, but they will send the new charge without asking permission and PayPal will just send more funds.
I have also had this happen with a few merchants in China on E Bay.
I approve a charge and a few days later an additional $3 handling fee from them shows up that I didn’t authorizes.
User accounts are a real pain in the @$$ for me… I’ve been dissuaded several times from making a purchase because the webstore wanted a complete ancestral history [/sarcasm]. If I don’t plan to make regular purchases from a particular seller, I don’t see the point of creating a user account – I’m totally with you on that point.
Someone once told me that websites mine their user account data for sales and demographic info… this, too, makes me not want to engage in e-commerce. The comparison you made between e-commerce and walking into a store really struck a chord: I don’t want to give a company anything other than my money in exchange for their product.
I like all of your points, really. How soon can we begin to force webstores to implement them? 😉
Being an international student what I hate is that I can not use my U.S. Paypal in the U.K. as it refuses to ship to my U.K. address. I would have to create a brand new PayPal in the U.K. with a different history. Why should I need two accounts, I’m assuming it is some stupid Homeland Security law to stop funding terrorism. I don’t know a lot of Terrorists that play GURPS, 40K, and make paper models. Well I don’t know any terrorists so perhaps I’m wrong.
Only 4 people participating in this discussion so far? I guess it’s still too early for The Revolution. 😆
I’m finding online shopping pretty good at the moment. Having said that, I always use paypal and rarely buy anything I can’t download. An exchange rate of $1.4/£1 may have something to do with my positive attitude.
Well, I’d like to have at least the CHOICE if I want to create an account or not. Filling out all the forms just for ordering one item – is that really necessary? :-/
Concerning your approach, Christopher, I find it quite interesting. Would be nice to try that 😉
Yeah, I’m planning to do a little testbed and see how it handles in practice. A lot of it is made possible by PayPal’s various APIs, especially the combination of Express Checkout with Digital Goods. Their documentation makes my head hurt, but I gotta stay sharp. 🙂