Ok, I have a beef with ecommerce web sites, and I just need to get this off my chest. If even ONE site reads this and changes its process, I will have accomplished something.
My house has no mailbox. The short story is that local punks kept vandalizing my mailbox, so I finally gave up, removed it, and got a P.O. box. Besides the irritation of now having to drive into town every day to get my mail (and I am a mail junkie), there is a much bigger problem caused by this.
Ordering online is a bytch*. When I get to the point where the shopping cart wants to know my shipping address, I cringe. Which address do I give? If the company is going to ship via USPS, I need to give my P.O. Box address, because no mail comes to the house. If the company is going to ship via UPS or FedEx, or some other trucking company, then I need to give my physical address.
The problem is, web sites rarely tell me which service they plan to use, and ALMOST EVERY TIME, I guess wrong. If I decide they probably will use USPS, they don't. If I think they'll probably use UPS or FedEx, they don't. I've had more packages disappear into the ether in the last few months, it's just unbelievable.
I understand that sometimes the method of shipment is determined based on what is ordered, so it may not be possible to tell me in advance. That's ok. Here's what you can do instead.
Allow me to do an IF / THEN / ELSE scenario. Give me an option to tell you:
IF you plan to use USPS, THEN deliver to my P.O. Box address; ELSE, deliver to my physical address. That's not a difficult concept, people. AT THE VERY LEAST, let me give you those kinds of shipping instructions in the comments.
I spend a lot of money on ecommerce sites. YOU may very well get some of my money if you solve this problem for me. If you don't, you may very well lose my business.
</end of rant>
* (That link is meaningless to this rant, so you can safely ignore it. It is, however, my newest domain purchase, so if you want to buy the site off of me, let me know. End of pitch.)
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Couldn't agree with you more Donna. Shipments to multiple addresses using multiple shipping options are a pain to deal with whether you are a customer or a merchant.
The comment box is the easiest and most straight forward in my opinion. Shoppers should leave special instructions for shipments that want handled differently or left in a special place upon delivery.
I have seen a lot of sites that let you edit your order, cart or shipping and address, that seems to work too, since customers can go back and modify any aspect of the checkout or go back and add comments f they forget initially.
Another good solution would be to show what provider is going to be used before the shipping address is entered. So merchants may know they can only ship certain items via certain providers, and include that once the item is added to a customers cart. Or show it one step before the shipping info is added. The cart could use the billing address by default and give the customer a chance to edit their shipping address once they see the method of delivery.
Many sites already use some of these strategies, it's just to bad they don't seem to be the same ones you shop at. My recommendation is that you forward this post to the top ten sites you shop at and see if they listen. You could even send them suggestions on how they can improve customer usability. It may be worth it if you keep losing packages!
Hi Donna,
On my site, right before the part where you put in your shipping address I have in italicized letters that I use UPS to ship and please put in your home address. Yet I still get people using their PO box!?
My other pet peave when ordering online is when there is more than 2 pages to the checkout process. I hate that!
Which is why I collect all of my pertinent info on one page. Quick and easy.
Thanks for the rant.
Steve, hopefully, you can control that by doing a quick check. If they entered P.O. or PO or POB, etc. give them a popup warning. Still allow them to enter that just in case the name of their street is POB St. or whatever, but a popup warning after they fill that field would probably eliminate 99.9% of those. At least, as a site owner, you can control some of these issues. As the buyer, there's nothing I can do.
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