In the 21st century, the information age, retail seems to be highly focused on the internet, which is where sales are shifting to. And yet, 2 decades into the era of the modern internet (public with graphical interface), most online retailers don’t employ simple technological solutions that would ease the burden of online shopping. Here are some of my top pet peeves.
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Bi-annual credit card updates
All credit cards expire every 2 years, then they are replaced with another card that has the identical card number and a new expiration date, which is always 2 years in the future (and has new CSV# for security). This should be very simple for online retailers to track and for users to update. However, many of my online memberships (monthly or quarterly billing) don’t notify me in advance AND nearly all require me to re-enter my full credit card information (some including address).
Technology solutions:
- Membership type billing already has calendar tracking – update calendar function to let users know one billing cycle in advance of pending expiration
- UI can be updated to handle “edit” feature for existing credit card (without needing to reenter card #)
- There could be a checkbox for “updated card” which automatically updates the expiry date and only requires CSV#
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Address entry (city, state + zip code)
The US Postal Service (and presumably other country postal services) has been using zip code (postal) code as a shortcut for city and state for half a century, long before the modern internet. Yes, you address envelopes with city and state, but that’s just the backup info; the postal service uses the code to look up city and state and to see where they send it. So why do so many online retailers force users to manually enter city, state AND zip code?
Technology can help:
- Implement zip code lookup and change UI such that users enter zip code alone (and see City/State autofilled).
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Lack of product info & pictures
When a consumer shops online, the experience is necessarily different than in-person shopping; after all, we have no sample product to examine directly. However, there’s no good reason why less information should be available to the consumer; why do so many online retailers provide such scant information (often a sentence, sometimes less) on what the product is like, what the materials are and why we should consider buying it? Also, with modern cameras and the ever-dropping price of storage, I don’t see why any 3-dimensional product should lack for pictures from multiple angles (one picture does not suffice) AND with full-spectrum lighting, such that the colors are “true”.
Technology can help:
- Provide textual description of color, size, weight, materials and other salient info from the product manufacturer (e.g., scan the informational side of the box and put it through OCR). This will also help visually impaired shoppers.
- Buy a full-spectrum light for your photos (or use manufacturer’s professional photos), take pictures from at least 2 different angles (3 if it’s clothing) and provide both thumbnail and large version of each photo. Update UI to accommodate this.
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Shipping & Handling
Shipping & Handling (S&H) prices are completely divorced from the actual shipping and handling costs, usually based on purchase price. So if I purchase something inexpensive that is large and heavy, a consumer might pay substantially less S&H for that, than for shipping an expensive small item, like jewelery (or two equally priced items might have same S&H cost, even though one is obviously much heavier & bigger). This wild inconsistency and often egregious S&H costs was extremely frustrating for me and I’m sure many other consumers as well – I believe this was what helped skyrocket Amazon and Zappos businesses because they had seemingly much better S&H practices (often free or included). Of course, this S&H inconsistency isn’t a new problem, as catalog retailers have been doing this since long back, but with 21st technology and cheap storage, there is NO EXCUSE for these irrational kind of S&H practices.
Technology can help:
- Each item has weight and size (dimensions) included in your database (and should be visible to users, per previous point) – simply create a tool to calculate the total order’s size and weight (with relevant handling fee), as compared to available shipping containers and calculate the real-world S&H costs – use this to charge S&H (transparency to the user will help – savvy shopping programs could even suggest companion item that would not increase or only minimally increase the shipping to get more value).
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Multiple animations per page
This isn’t strictly a retailer problem, but numerous websites seem to think it’s a good idea to place multiple animations (almost always advertisements) on a single webpage (I’m looking at you, Yahoo). This is a terrible idea as users can’t multi-task that well, to pay attention to multiple animations at once and neither can some web browsers – this causes unnecessary slowness and sometimes even browser crashes (and certainly numerous shockwave player crashes). I assume this is done because web users have learned to routinely ignore advertisements, especially of the static (non-animated) kind, but this is an absurd response – users can also learn to ignore multiple animations per page.
Technology can help:
- Use big data and analytics to learn about users and to use less frequent and more targeted advertisements, which will yield more interest. If the user is not logged in, you can learn about the user based on cookies and site clicks, to figure out the best method and content of advertising to that type of user. Don’t throw generic ads (destined to be “noise”) at every user who hits your site, rather save the ads for later, and make it interesting to “that” user.
Disclaimer: I don’t mean to suggest that no online retailers do these things well – I know for sure that some do easy credit card updates, zip code lookups and ample product information & pictures (though I haven’t yet seen anyone transparently providing shipping relevant to actual size/weight of products selected; I’m sure someone is doing this) and most retail sites avoid the multiple animations pitfall. But the majority of experiences I’ve had reflect very lazy technological implementation, which places unnecessary (and unprofitable) burdens on the user.
