You may have read previous posts where I urge you not to host your website with Bliksem Hosting… but in case you haven’t, I figure a reminder can’t hurt. Anyway, a good year after I posted that entry, I decided that it would be smart to follow my own advice. It’s true that I transferred my hosting plan over to Site5 (a fabulous hosting company), but I wasn’t able to transfer all of my domain registrations over to them.
So they remained with Bliksem, or more accurately, with some second company called eNom. But the interesting part is that they neglected to tell me that my domains expired. Nothing like awful customer service to cause me to spring into action.
I needed a cheap place to host my domains (and for some reason Site5 couldn’t transfer them), so I went to GoDaddy since they had the best prices. But the checkout process threw me for a loop…
That’s strange. I see an Update Cart button and an Empty Cart button… where do I buy this stuff? Maybe I’m too used to Amazon (silly me getting used to a solid, common design) – it turns out that the button I was looking for was clear at the bottom of the screen, and still cut off!
And did I mention my screen resolution is 1680 x 1050? Here’s a fun fact to know and tell - not being able to find the checkout button is one of the leading causes of abandoned shopping carts in e-commerce apps. Sure, you’re saying I should have read each bullet as a step and gone through all of them in order… but that’s not how shopping carts have worked in other sites.
GoDaddy made it up to me though – two days after placing my order, I got a call from one of their representatives to follow up on the transaction. That was pretty nice! One step above Site5 even; although, I’m sure they did it to try and talk me into buying a hosting plan. Still, I appreciate the thought.
So speaking of bad checkout interfaces, have you ever tried to pay with a credit card at any retail store in which you scan the card yourself? They automatically assume you want to process it with a PIN, but if that isn’t the case, which button do you push? Cancel, Enter, Yes, No? Sometimes there is even a button which says “Credit” but that’s not the button you push. The local office depot by my house has, I shit you not, a “secret” button which you can’t see that you have to push for a credit card. At least GoDaddy’s checkout button is visible (albeit after scrolling).
Yikes… I definitely have to say the secret invisible button wins the awful usability award for this year.
I find that the usability of those devices vary. The biggest challenge is communicating what to do to get to the next step. A big stumbling block is the Yes vs Enter story. Some people have you press Enter to confirm, others Yes, and it’s often not consistent within one device, let alone across devices.
The best interface I’ve seen for a credit card swiping machine is at Trader Joe’s (I don’t think there’s one in Nebraska yet). It always asks the question and tells you what to do, so it’s always quick and easy to use. For example, one screen says,
Do you want cash back?
Press YES for cash back
It’s not complete, but it immediately directs me to the button set that I need to focus on, and gets me through the interface easily. It’s been consistently quick since the first time I used it.
I think that MasterCard is trying to get past all this with their PayPass feature. How can it get esier than passing a card in front of a reader, taking your receipt and leaving?
However, being a security conscious individual, I’m not too eager to sign up…
PS: Zach needs an comment edit feature for those who need to correct their typos.
PPS: I hate my life.
Awww, poor Steve. I deleted your duplicate post and fixed your typos for you. No need to worry about spelling here, your ideas are fine just the way they are. :)
“Zach needs an comment edit feature”
Missed one!
my local supermarket has an interface on their credit card swipy things that i have literally only recently managed to not trip up on anymore (i’ve lived here > 7 months).
below the screen there are several unlabelled buttons which you hit throughout the process when they correspond to the word on the screen directly above it that you want to select (much like on an ATM). but the last step is it asks you if the total displayed is ok. the words on the bottom of the screen say “yes” and “no”, and i always hit the unlabelled button below “yes”…. except there are actually real buttons all the way at the bottom labelled “yes” and “no” which they want me to hit.