Okay, you’ve all heard of Paypal. Fine way to handle online transactions if you’re selling vintage Hot Wheels on eBay. Occasionally a small business client will ask me about using Paypal to process their online transactions. They don’t want to deal with the expense and hassle of a “real” merchant account. That’s understandable. Even if you already have a brick-and-mortar merchant account, it’s still a bit of work to get an online merchant account, and the banks and various middleman always take their rather hefty piece of your pie. Often people think they can just go with Paypal and save themselves some of the headache. But is this really true? And if it is true, at what price are you making your life a little easier - at the price of alienating some of your customers? Let me recount to you a recent online shopping experience I had.

Now listen, I’m a big believer in shopping online, particularly around the holidays. Particularly if free shipping is involved.
One, I detest the mall for many reasons I just don’t have space to get into.
Two, I want to support online merchants.
Three, I like the uniqueness of the gifts I find online.
Four, gas is just way too high to go traipsing all over town even if I wanted to.

Anyway, so off I go, clicking and weaving, bobbing and ducking through the online universe. In search of a vintage Black Santa head for my auntie (don’t ask) I come to a nice-looking site called Ruby Lane (www.rubylane.com). They seem to have some cool stuff. I find the Santa, add it to my cart, keep shopping, and find a nice bracelet for my sister too and add that.

Ok, now freeze.

What happens next? My experience with online shopping says, I go to the checkout process, pay for my stuff, decide where I want to ship it to, and go on about my merry way with two people checked off my list. Right?

Ah, no. That would be too easy.

I click on shopping cart button, prominently located at the top of the page. That’s when I get the first obstacle. I have to register for my shopping cart to become “real.” All right, fine. I give them my name and email address. Now that I’m registered, I want to finish checking out. But I can’t. I have to go to my email, find the email confirming my registration and do a little dance, and go back to the site to get to my shopping cart. I’m starting to get impatient.

I get back to the site, login, and find my cart. Mysteriously, in the process, it has lost all the stuff I put in my cart. Now I’m getting a little steamed, but I go through my history, do another little dance, and finally get my crap back into my cart. Sigh. Ok. Can I pay now please?

No. I can’t. First of all, because Ruby Lane is actually comprised of a million tiny little antique and jewelry stores under one umbrella, I have two different carts. Now why would they do this to me? It’s like if I went to the grocery store and got an apple from the produce department, and a steak from the meat department, and a six-pack of beer from the spirits department, and they forced me to pay three different times in three different places for the stuff I wanted. As the customer, I don’t care who these little stores are, and I don’t want to deal with them individually. I want to pay one time in one place and get my crap. Okay. I’m really irritated now. Can I just pay and get the heck out of here please??

No. I still can’t pay. You know why? Ruby Lane doesn’t actually do any e-commerce. They email the shop owner(s) and tell them about my order and leave it up to them to arrange for payment individually. How this helps the shop owner I don’t know. I do know it has just placed yet ANOTHER obstacle in between me and the shiny happy stuff I want and by now I am really pissed.

The next day (and long after any impulse upselling opportunity they have missed) I go check my email and I have messages from the two shop owners. Thanks for my order, would I please pay, and they’ll send me the junk. Um. No instruction on how, where or who to pay. None. Sigh … Why is this such an ordeal?

Okay. It’s not really their fault this checkout process was designed so badly, so I email them both saying, please direct me to where, when how and by this point I’m wondering WHY to pay and I will do so. They email me back saying I have to go BACK to rubylane.com to pay.

I go back to rubylane. I login to my account. I get to my shopping cart. I find the pay button way down at the bottom. I click it. It takes me to Paypal.com. Now I have a Paypal account, mind you, but because most of the online merchants I shop with use real merchant accounts, and I hardly ever buy anything from eBay or Craigslist anymore, I never use it. So in the meantime since I have last used it, I’ve changed bank accounts. I figure, ok, no problem, I’ll enter my check card number as a visa card and pay that way. No dice. paypal doesn’t like it. Three times and it won’t work. By now I’ve used up my allotment of computer time before Brandon gets into mischief and I have to walk away frustrated, still not able to complete my transaction.

The next day I go back to Paypal. I figure out how to add a new checking account to my Paypalaccount. I dig out my checkbook, do the little dance, blah blah blah… now it tells me I have to wait three days for it to verify my account. Paypal has to deposit a penny or two into my account, then I have to go check my balance (god help me if I hadn’t set up my online account yet) and tell Paypal how much it gave me so it knows my checking account is real and I’m the person it belongs to.

We’re now going on a week since I found that damn 15-dollar santa head. At this point I don’t even want the stupid thing anymore. But I am obligated to complete my transaction because that was in the fine print at rubylane - click here and you’re chained to this purchase, no matter how many headaches it gives you in the process.

Let’s review. Customer wants stuff. Customer does Google search, wades through irrelevant returns and eventually finds merchant who sells stuff. Customer adds stuff to shopping cart. Merchant throws one, two, three … EIGHT confusing and unnecessary obstacles in between customer and stuff.

Now. Let’s compare this to a brick and mortar experience.

Customer wants stuff. Customer drives to mall, searches for parking, navigates crowds, finds merchant who sells stuff. Customer adds stuff to shopping cart. Customer walks to checkout counter and pays for stuff. Customer walks away with stuff, merchant walks away with money, everyone’s happy.

Is it any wonder most people still shop online but buy offline?? If you’re an online merchant and you make a better profit selling your stuff online, you need to look good and hard at your checkout process. If you’re using Paypal, and you’re bigger than a one-person outfit selling homemade junk or auctioning junk to individuals, you need to check yourself, and get a real merchant account. I’ll help you with the forms if you really need it. Just don’t put your customers through what Ruby Lane put me through. And just in case anyone’s listening, I’m linking to them with the words Worst Online Shopping Experience Ever as the link.

It goes back to usability, one of my fave things to rant about. You can have the nicest merchandise on the planet. You can have the most awe-inspiringly-gorgeous website ever built. All of it goes down the drain if you don’t pay attention to your customer’s experience, and that experience is overwhelmingly influenced by usability. When people shop in the Real World, they don’t have to learn how to use the store. The stuff is in front of them, arranged all nicely. It has price tags and indications of size on it. There’s a big sign pointing them to the dressing room and another pointing them to the checkout. The checkout generally accepts whatever type of money they want to give it.

Make your website as easy to use as your brick and mortar store and you will make more money.

It really is that simple, people.

And hey, if you want to read more about how to get a proper merchant account, click here. Or email me or Ulan. We’re always happy to help.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Usability, Rants & Raves. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.