Christmas Shopping Woes

I am peeved about my experience with one of the online shopping sites recently. I set off redeeming my gift voucher and trust me it was a can of worms.

The shopping home page is miserable(cluttered), I bet my 8^th standard daughter would've designed an intuitive and superior one!

Online shopping is a big deal and I am surprised to see how recklessly and callously it’s done, playing with those silly animations on the home page around navigation is just unforgivable and ridiculous.

I am one who doesn’t give up easily, therefore I search for a couple of items through the chaotic product listing by going back and forth and try to add them to my shopping cart but can’t find the add to cart option upfront! So… I click on the product details(new page renders) and find the ‘add to cart’ option there, great God. Now how do I add the other item to the cart I’ve chosen to buy? You guessed it right, I have to hit the back button on the browser couple of times to reach the page, because there’s no option to go back to the page from where I started, I only have the option ‘Shop More’.

One hilarious thing about this site is that you find yourself signing in a couple of times though you are already signed in.

Well, I went through the rigmarole to complete the purchase and promising myself never to use this site ever in future. I give my gift certificate number in the text box and pay the balance amount through my credit card, you think am done with the transaction? Sorry boss, NO.

The transaction processing page shows up and gives a message ‘OUP Waiting for Gateway Response’ and I wait there for the message to show up ‘your transaction successful’ or something to that effect, but that doesn’t happen.Reluctantly, I call the customer support, and they sweetly tell me that the application has some problem and my money and gift certificate will be credited back between 48-72 hours.

48-72 hours? Holy cow! Why should I wait? Their inefficiency can’t be my inconvenience, right.

This is one classic example of losing business and customers because of bad design. Usability matters a lot for sites which do business online, when will the folks understand this simple truth and wake up to the fact?