Customers Tell Me Ordering Is Too Complex
Bob Morrison
Registered Users Posts: 11 Big grins
Has anyone else in the pro section received similar complaints? How did you handle them? Is there a help page they can access during the ordering process? Do you put any instructions on your gallery's main page?
Thanks.
Thanks.
0
Comments
Yes, there's a big help button at the top of every page in the cart.
We don't get many complaints that the ordering process is cumbersome -- usually the opposite!
Don
Ordering has gotten a lot better over the last 12 months. The first step was when they re-designed the shopping cart buttons. The next step was in the organization of standard prints (to be a larger list of items). This third round of changes I find better still.
The batch add to cart option has confused one person. He didn't realize that after hitting batch add, that he then had to select all. I walked them through on the phone, but it didn't take very much effort to clear things up with him.
One thing that I've thought would help the ordering of prints would be to have a separate entry for paper type, rather than three price listings per size. But alas, because each paper costs a different amount, that option is not viable.
If anything, the large selection that Smugmug offers will always make things more complex than other sites. You don't get the large choice of print sizes and paper types at ofoto, Kodak, or some of the other sites. Other sites don't have the option to use or inore color correction. Other sites don't have cropping options. This variety of choice has its plusses and drawbacks.
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It's one more drop-down on the page you don't get at places like Ofoto and not an easy thing for customers to get their heads around. We held off on putting that option in for many months because we were afraid we'd hear comments about confusion.
We have some dgrinners who just love features (hi Nik
But credit where credit is due: in the two weeks since we put it in there, we haven't had any questions about it and it is being used more often than I thought. It took a lot of work to make it clear with two white borders, etc., and that's probably what makes it work.
I'd love to hear where your customer thinks it's complex, but my bet is it has to do with cropping — the blue lines, adjust crop button, the concept that their shot may not fit the paper they're selecting.
Unfortunately, that is complex. But if you remove it from the shopping cart, you'll get 1% returns and rage like you can't believe. Hell hath no fury like a bride whose head you just clipped.