[thelist] how design affects ecommerce

[Brent Rieck]

<apply type="hat" name="consumer, user">

Yeah, it might not follow "normal sales practices", but I guess I happen
to hate "normal sales practices".  I don't like being asked disingenuous
questions by a sales person at a store, especially questions that are so
transparently designed to either gather demographics on me or
upsell/crosssell within their inventory.  I'll gladly answer a genuine
"How are you" or a question designed to help me find what I'm looking
for - and I'll just as gladly lie about my zipcode/age (except in
state-mandated situations: liquor, cigarettes, etc)/occupation/etc.
should I be asked.

The same applies to an online transaction - when I buy a CD, a website
don't need to know ANYTHING about me but my shipping address, credit
card, and possibly phone number.  Knowing anything else won't help them
put a CD in a box, slap a shipping label on it and set it on the loading
dock for UPS to pick up.

As a consumer, I'm baffled why price comparision databases like
pricescan.com, mysimon.com, dealtime.com, and pricegrabber.com can show
me "approximate shipping", which close enough for me, while most of the
ecom sites they link to hide that from me until the last possible
moment.

Also as a consumer/user, I don't see why the BS of being locked into a
purchase because you're in line and people will get annoyed if you
interrupt the flow should be replicated in an online transaction. 
There's no line, no checker, nobody to get annoyed but a programmer
who's got to code the shopping cart/checkout stuff and who now has to do
more work.  And frankly, I don't care if the programmer gets annoyed. 
(Don't get annoyed programmers, I'm a programmer too)

Granted, I don't *need* to know shipping costs and taxes up front, but I
need to know them before I put in a credit card number, and preferably
before I put in my name and address - a zip code should be sufficient. 
But if I do know the shipping costs up front, I'm happy - there's no
surprises.  If I have to wait until I'm about to check out, I dread the
surprise shipping charges, and if they're out of line (in my mind), I'll
cancel the order and be pissed off that this website wasted my time.  

</apply>

--Brent


On Thu, 2002-01-10 at 18:15, Jon Hall wrote:
> I'd have to entirely disagree. That doesn't follow normal sales practices.
> People have been selling things for thousands of years. It's a pretty
> refined science. It doesn't matter if the sale is online or not.
> After a potential customer has expressed any kind of interest in purchasing,
> do NOT just answer their question. In this case, the question is, "What is
> tax and shipping?". You answer their question, but you ask another one back.
> That's the hook. Hopefully they bite.
> 
> If the customer is on the phone and you have to put them on hold, at the
> very least get their phone number, THEN you put them on hold. This get's the
> customer in the mindset that they are in the process of purchasing
> something. Kind of like the line at the grocery store. Once you are in the
> line and you look down and you think that you might not want that gallon of
> milk, because you really only need the half gallon, most people are not
> going to get out of line, run back to to the dairy department and get the
> smaller one instead. They will buy the larger one anyway.
> 
> During an online transaction, since there is never any contact with the
> potential customer, so it's very hard to "sell" the customer. The best way
> is to get them in the mindset that they are now buying something, is to
> collect their information, before presenting shipping and tax information.
> The grocery store analogy works here too. Tax is not applied until the
> entire order has been sent down the little ramp to the bagger. That is the
> grocery store's way of locking you into a purchase. It works very well. We
> all know what happens if someone decides to take an item off of the bill
> after it's been rung up. The cashier calls the manager, while everyone in
> the line behind you stares at the back of your head, thinking really nasty
> thoughts.
> 
> You say in the buyers eye's it's dishonesty? I dont know what world you are
> living in, but most people are stupid or don't have time to care. They just
> want to get their stuff and go. The small percentage of people who actually
> will cancel their order because the order process is not to their liking are
> the "nit-pickers". You don't want them as customers anyway. They are not
> going to be satisfied no matter how much you try. There is nothing dishonest
> about asking a customer for their information showing them shipping and tax
> prices. They can close their browser window at any time.
> 
> Sorry for the diatribe, but having sold video games for a living on the
> internet, on the phone, and in person, for 4 years, 6 days a week ( two of
> which were at a flea market), I know how consumers act, and I could sell an
> ice cube to an Eskimo if necessary. My shopping cart follows the principles
> I learned all those years ago, and it works.
> 
> jon
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Keith" <cache at dowebs.com>
> To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2002 7:42 PM
> Subject: RE: [thelist] how design affects ecommerce
> > I've designed and sold dozens of different shopping carts over the
> > years. And every one of them requires the buyer to select "Where
> > your purchase will be shipped to" before it will add their first item.
> > From then on I can display the actual shipping and, if applicable, tax
> > in an acurrate grand total every time they add, adjust, or remove an
> > item. That destination has to be collected at some point, why not up
> > front? And the shipping/tax/total has to be calculated at some point,
> > why not every time the cart changes. I consider it just plain laziness
> > to not give that info to the buyer. But more important, as you point
> > out, it's a sale killer to try to hide the grand total until after you've
> > extracted a buyer's life story from them. In the buyer's eye it's
> > dishonesty no matter how you try to justify it.
> >
> > keith
> >
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> 
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