Managing Analytics

Valentine is coming, so maybe I should get something for my wife, before it is too late.

I stumbled upon www.limogesjewelry.com and like the “My Beloved Top-Engraved Message Stainless Steel Band”.

The product looks great at that price. What attracted me is the beautiful verse inscribed on the inside of the band, “I am My Beloved’s and My Beloved is Mine”. The big red “Add to Cart” button is easy to find, so I clicked.

Nothing happened. Click again. Same thing.

Is there a problem with Chrome browser I am using?

Switched to IE, the same problem.

After a few minutes, I saw a little error message on top of the page “Please type in your Personalized Message”.

Hmm? I thought I had chosen the personalized message?

Then I realized that it actually allows me to put in a personalized message for outside of band, up to 25 letters and spaces. This is written as part of the product decription but just completely skip from my eyes.

Ok, I put in “The Lord is my shepherd”

Click “Add to Cart” again.

A simple yet good shopping cart with candy aisle on the left. It also got some good security messages there such as “Verisign”, “McAfee Secure” and “BBB Online”.

So I continued with “Proceed to checkout”

First page is simple, kind of like Amazon’s which I am very familiar with. I am not a returning customer so choose “new customer”

Oh wow, this is a one page checkout layout. I have heard that before but haven’t got much chance actually using it (I do most of my shopping on Amazon which is one click).

Page layout is clean and simple with clear indication of step 1, step 2, step 3 and a big “Place MY ORDER” button.

It’s nice that it provides different payment options including paypal and bill me later.

With extreme delight, I fill in my shipping and billing information and click the big “Place my order” button.

What? Why I have to create a password?

Check the page again. It clearly states only the field with “*” is required and there is no “*” for password creation. So why I have to create a password?

Tried again, same problem.

Now I realized although the site adopted the “guest checkout” concept but it still requires of creating a password.

For what?

What a shame that a delightful checkout experience was ruined by a simple problem like this!

Since I like the product very much, I was willing to create a password to finish my order. Imagine the sales the site could lose for those users who might just bail in such situation. I didn’t bother to Google but I am pretty sure there are other websites can provide similar services, possibly at lower cost.

So what’s my evaluation of shopping experience on Limogesjewelry.com?

It could be perfect, but now I am disappointed.

Good news is both errors could be fixed pretty easily.

All it takes is somebody deeply cares about customers and know how to use usability and testing tools to identify issues and fix them.

But in reality, there are tons of problems like this everywhere on the internet. While the HIPPOs are bragging about their social media strategies and media are busy predicting what’s the next big thing, there are millions of customers are bothered by such problems and billions of dollars are lost due to less satisfied customers.

It’s sad. Ecommerce is sad. As a web analyst working in ecommerce industry, I am deeply sad.