I'm here in White Plains, NY getting ready to head over to Seth Godin's place, stay tuned for updates on that exercise but I did want to get the world (okay, the 6 of you) updated on Hugh's most excellent T-Shirt Adventure.
First, technology still has a way to go, a long way. After breaking the refresh key on my laptop, I was forced to wait for my RSS reader to deliver the news from gapingvoid, Hugh's blog, regarding the launch of the T-shirt. After the feed, it's coming tomorrow, I was rocking.
Nothing on the 17th. Hmm. Nothing on the 18th. Double Hmmm. This morning, I checked directly on the gapingvoid. Agggh! They were a go. Note to self: Flame mail to RSS vendor, rant on blog about RSS readers.
Off to T-shirt land. Some fairly interesting things happening there. Keep in mind, none of the following applies to Hugh since he is using worldpay to process the payments.
Get prices is step one. Pricey? Naah, not really given what you get, expected quality, etc, etc.
Pull down for currency, cool, let's see the loonie hit. Hmm, company is worldpay and they think the world is: UK, Euros, Yankee Dollar. Why WORLDPAY would even waste the time to code the conversion is, well, next...
Billing address field. Ahh, pretty smart, basically open text box for the street, city, county, flat, suite, apartment number, etc. Then a specific box for postal code and one for country.
The box for postal code is important because all the other address information isn't checked when your credit card is used on the internet. It's postal code and the security id on the card. So, good idea for calling it out.
Alrighty. type in Mastercard number and head to next page. Bzzt! Error at the type. The page I was on expected Visa card. In red it sez, bud, this isn't a visa card, it's a mastercard, if you want to use this card, click here. Click, then off to the same page again to type in card information again. Weird, right? Well, maybe not. While you could say that they know it so process it, the other side says they are being nice to make sure you put the right card in. Whatever, no biggie.
Click onto to the next page. hmm, order confirmation. Where's the ship to option? There is none. Click, thanks for the order, buh bye.
Well, that's goofy. Fire off email to the shirt people saying you have my order, please make a note in the records with the actual shipping address as opposed to the billing address which is different.
In the end, I'm a proud papa of a bouncing baby t-shirt subscription. Yet more stuff for my kids to deal with when I'm doing my blogging from the big internet cafe in the sky. Note to self, google phrase big internet cafe in the sky and see how lame I am for using that phrase.
The customer experience? Ease of use? Lots of opportunity for screw this, I'm outta here? All interesting questions.
We still, as a technology industry, have a very very long way to go on the electronic commerce front. Hugh is a great case study for all this. Random guy, gets a following, has a product to sell, is not in the business of the particular product. He spent his time where you'd expect; i.e. getting the product up to his standards.
He 'outsourced' the part that is supposed to be the 'no brainer' part.
Hmmm... There has to be a better way for the Hugh types to make this happen and I don't think it's just a better shopping cart.
Off to Seth's place.
Rick,
Thanks for the feedback on the shopping cart. Hugh pointed me in the direction of your post.
The Worldpay (http://www.worldpay.com/ ) processing system is excellent for security but that does result in it being slightly cumbersome if it doesn't get data how it likes it.
I will add the functionality to collect shipping info for subscriptions - we do collect shipping info for single orders but it was overlooked for subs. section as the functionality is different.
We put this site together for Hugh very quickly and the little bugs will be ironed out over the coming days - it is only with good customer feedback that we can do this so thank you.
Kind Regards
Alex Walker
Indigo T-Shirts Ltd.
http://www.indigotshirts.com/gapingvoid/
Posted by: Indigo | April 20, 2005 at 02:15