What’s Borked With Online Shopping
I do quite a bit of online shopping. I’ve been doing it for a while now. I think that I would consider myself a pro at it.
Most online shopping goes something like this:
- Add items to some sort of “cart” or “bag”
- Create an account with the store
- Fill in billing and shipping information
- Enter in online payment information
- Confirm order
If you guessed option 2, you’re right. Back in the day when online shopping was new, it was feasible to create an account on the handful of stores that did business online.
Nowadays, everyone that sells something has an online store. Is it really realistic for us to create an account for every single store that we want to buy something from? In my opinion, no.
I recently did some online shopping for clothes and I was pleasantly surprised by one online retailer, American Eagle. Instead of the tired, old busted steps theirs went like this:
- Add items to “bag”
- Choose to create an account or just checkout
- Fill in billing and shipping information
- Enter in online payment information
- Confirm order
This is the RIGHT way to run your online store. Sometimes it makes sense to create an account for an online store; usually when you order from that retailer a lot.
Treat your customers with respect and they’ll respect you. If they shop at your store a lot, they’ll probably just create an account and they won’t be put out by doing so.
If someone just wants to buy a few T-shirts for themselves or some items as a gift make the process as painless as possible. Don’t bug them with silly account creation nonsense.
The online retailer is there to make a sale not to collect information for some massive data warehouse; let the users give you their money. If they want to come back they will and they might create an account to boot.
If online shoppers are pestered, they might not even complete the transaction and you’ve just lost the sale.
