Buying stuff, whatever that stuff is, is a process that has changed and evolved significantly because of our bff, the internet. And let’s be honest, we all spend a lot of time on the web. If you’re like me, one of the more productive things to do online is buying something, because we can’t find it anywhere else or it’s cheaper or it’s easier.
Even if we like to see it in person and try it on or try it out, many times we may leave that store to go to our computers to see if we can get a better deal. Nothing wrong with that.
“What’s your biggest pet peeve about online shopping, Eric?”
Tell me if this hasn’t happened to you:
I’m all ready for checkout and click the nicely-marked checkout button, and I’m brought to a screen that asks me to log in or register an account with the site. And I can’t complete my purchase unless I have done one of those things.
I hate that.
I do understand that from a retailer’s perspective obtaining information to build a consumer database of blah blah blah may seem like a great way to make things more convenient for the consumer or some ROI plan or a way to build a relationship for the future. The problem is that it’s not convenient, retailers may be doing only half of the business they could be, and I am not here to have a relationship with said retailer.
I came because I wanted to buy something, and that is really what the relationship is. And that process should be easy, quick, and as distraction-less as possible. What happens when I have to log in or register? I’ve now been detoured onto a path that potentially will lead me away from doing the one thing that I (and the retailer) want.
The detour looks something like this. I have to remember if I’ve ever bought something from this site. If I haven’t, I now have to spend X amount of time filling out fields of information, which more often than not span multiple screens. Or, I kind of remember having registered at some point and try to log in with some username and password combo. I can’t remember what they are anymore so now I have to request/reset them via email and then log in and then… You get the picture. Personally, at this point it’s a 50/50 chance that I end up buying whatever it was I had wanted; those chances go down 10% every additional second.
What’s this have to do with UI? Let nothing slow down the process from cart to checkout to complete. As for getting consumers to register and all that jazz, just make it optional, something the end-user can do if they want to. Definitely have the option, but just make sure it is indeed an option.
If you like numbers, this is an interesting article: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button
Tags: checkout, e-commerce, retail, shopping, UI, user experience, user interface
Pretty good post. I just came by your site and wanted to say
that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Anyway
I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!