November 16th 2008 / learned, shared
the e-commerce situation
I’m fed up.
I’m tired of wanting or more often needing to buy something online and being forced to jump through a series of tiny hoops of the “on-fire” variety only to be told that I made a mistake somewhere along the way, yet said mistake is a guarded secret and up to me to guess where it was made and repair it before I can move forward and finish my purchase. I’m likely already pissed off from the process and fit to leave.
Perhaps I have less patience for this ridiculous circus than your average consumer, because I’m a web developer and know it’s possible to make a form simple and easy to use. A form that can tell me, the user, exactly what I did wrong and even give advice on how to fix it. A form that looks nice and functions better.
I have yet to experience an online shopping system that made me feel good about my purchase, let alone left me smiling and wanting to buy more. Even Amazon falls short, sure they get close, but they certainly have issues and they are clearly not sharing their knowledge or experience with other online retailers.
There has got to be a better way, a better process, a better checkout experience.
I’m not going to just gripe about it. I’m going to solve this problem.
“the e-commerce situation” was written by James Mathias on November 16th 2008
A writer, artist and outlaw. Living, working and playing in Tennessee. James writes TAO in a vain effort to teach, learn and share with the industry he loves.
feedback, comments & opinions
4 comments
Thanks Wil, I’m not sure how I’ll go about presenting my solution, or how it’ll come about but I know I’m going to be working on this problem, until I solve it.
Threadless has a pretty simple system. I know what you mean though..it can be quite frustrating.
Sorta off topic, but will you be selling pre-made WP themes anytime in 2009?
Threadless I have not experienced, I’ll check it out.
As for themes, I want to, but I’m not sure I have time or that there is a market for it.
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Wilhelm Murdoch
11/16/08 7:30 pm
Bro, you are my hero and I couldn’t agree with you more. I’d actually like to see how you would fix the problem by taking a popular offending site and updating it. Kind of like what The Big Noob did with CraigsList: http://designeye.org/listguy/
Cheers!