Via Tomalak’s Realm comes AskTog: Top 10 Reasons to Not Shop On Line a dave letterman top ten list with a (horror) story for each one.
Here’s my interpretation :
- Waiting for the pages to load: Don’t assume they have a high speed connection; Never use a graphic for text; Every graphic must add real value (to the customer not the VP).
- Stupid promotional efforts make the company appear dim witted: Don’t deceive or lie (ever or even a little) in order to bring customers to your site/company.
- Insufficient, unintelligible, or just plain wrong information for making a buying decision.
- Search can’t find: be forgiving for Misspellings; “OR” searches instead of “AND” by default.
- Do you what my money: Sites that don’t work on my browser/OS; Click the button to buy , only to be directed to call instead.
- Temporary shopping carts: sites that forget want I asked for or timeout because “I’m” to slow to respond / make up my mind / confirm with my friend.
- Sites that can’t ship in-stock items in a timely fashion.
- One size fits none; entering credit card numbers and dates in in-fexible manners. Badly designed defaults.
- After the sale service: confirmation emails that no one has ever printed out.
- Buyer Protection guarantees that don’t.