New cart problem? And a suggested solution...

DJ-S1DJ-S1 Registered Users Posts: 2,303 Major grins
edited July 19, 2008 in SmugMug Support
I had a customer (okay, a relative) place an order of photos from a camping trip we took recently. I looked through her order as I always do and found that she had requested one 4x6 print of 18 different photos as well as 10 4x6s of one shot. Upon looking at the image she wanted 10 of, I saw that it wasn't even a family shot! -it was one that I was being "artsy" with.

Since I know this person, I was very sure that "10" was a typo and that she really wanted just "1", so I fired off an email to the help heroes and got an immediate reply telling me that they can't change an order but they could cancel it if it hasn't shipped yet.

Fair enough, so I finally got in touch with my relative an asked her if she really wanted ten of those prints. She answered "I didn't even order that one." It should have been zero all along. I notified Nick at the helpdesk, he canceled the order and I re-placed it. Everything is good and once again the support heroes gave me fantastic service! :barb I love you guys!

The question remains, how did she make that mistake?

Now I know her, so I know that I won't get any helpful information out of her. She's nearly computer illiterate, and there's no way she will actually remember any of the steps she took in placing the order. I'm not knocking her, she's very intelligent but not where computers are concerned. :D

I am left trying to figure out how the mistake could have been made on my own. All I have been able to figure is perhaps she changed that photo quantity to "1" by mistake, and seeing that mistake she clicked on the "1" (not the "+" or "-") and typed a "0". Now if she clicked just to the right of the "1", then the "0" would have been tacked on to the "1" to make "10", and she must not have noticed.

Which is a very long-winded way of making this suggestion: Perhaps you should make it so that when you click on the Quantity digit (or digits) it highlights the whole field. That way when you type a number it replaces the field instead of adding to it. It seems to me that replacing the field is more likely to be what the user intends in these cases, and honestly I think it is pretty standard web form behavior as well.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts - :deal

Comments

  • JoeGJoeG Registered Users Posts: 81 Big grins
    edited July 18, 2008
    Just curious, but didn't your customer/relative get a confirmation email? Did she notice that she was getting charged quite a bit more than she should have?

    I know that doesn't solve the problem, I'm just kinda surprised she didn't notice that the order was wrong.
    Joe Gearhart
    Photos | Blogs | Twitter | MySpace | Facebook
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited July 19, 2008
    people make these types of mistakes, we're always there to fix 'em thumb.gif

    Thanks for the post!
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited July 19, 2008
    DJ-S1 wrote:
    Which is a very long-winded way of making this suggestion: Perhaps you should make it so that when you click on the Quantity digit (or digits) it highlights the whole field.

    It should highlight the first time you focus the text area, but it would be a usability nightmare to select the entire contents every time you clicked in the box.

    Imagine having 100 items and wanting to change it to 110, but every time you clicked to put your cursor after the first 1, or drag-highlighted the first 0 we just highlighted ALL the text? Would be a bit frustrating.

    I have some work to do on the behavior of the quantity controls wrt being able to tab between them so i'll see if i can tweak the focus behavior a little bit the next time i'm in the code.

    Thanks for your post.
    Pedal faster
  • DJ-S1DJ-S1 Registered Users Posts: 2,303 Major grins
    edited July 19, 2008
    JoeG wrote:
    I'm just kinda surprised she didn't notice that the order was wrong.
    Yeah, you notice I didn't have any suggestions for showing previews of the order, etc. because that's all done pretty well already. Put it this way, I'm not surprised she didn't notice. rolleyes1.gif
    bigwebguy wrote:
    It should highlight the first time you focus the text area, but it would be a usability nightmare to select the entire contents every time you clicked in the box.

    Imagine having 100 items and wanting to change it to 110, but every time you clicked to put your cursor after the first 1, or drag-highlighted the first 0 we just highlighted ALL the text? Would be a bit frustrating.
    That's what I meant, it should highlight the first time you click the area. I don't believe it does that currently - at least it didn't seem to when I was paying with it.

    [edit] I went back and tried it again and now I see what you mean, I guess it does work properly. I didn't notice the number turning light blue as meaning the whole field is active, I'm used to the dark-blue background kind of highlighting for these cases. Sorry for the false alarm, I guess I should have known you guys had all this sorted out already! Now I have absolutely no explanation for how she could have ordered 10 by mistake - no worries, it's all taken care of already. [/edit]

    As for the "changing 100 to 110" part, I should have those problems! :D
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