Customer losing photos from cart

NorthernBuck

I know this has been addressed before but I wanted to make another post as a way of making a suggestion. I think I read that customers can click on the help button and e-mail you guys if this happens but I'm wondering why you can't just put a button next to the "Buy" button that says "Click here before buying". Then when they click they are taken to a page telling them they need to make sure they have cookies enabled and that they need to have the latest version of java installed with links showing them how to enable cookies as well as a link to the site where you can make sure java is up to date.

I just lost a customer who said they tried to order three times and each time their photos were not there when they go to their cart. Yes, they should have e-mailed me or contacted you but they just assumed I had a problem with my site. This happened last week but it has happened many other times. A few of them have placed huge orders only to find they had no photos in their cart when they tried to finish up. I would very much rather have them make sure things are in working order before they spend hours adding photos to their cart as apposed to just giving up instead of redoing what they just spent hours working on. I'm sure someone could suggest code for me to add a button and tell me how to do what I suggest but I'm guessing this something that will be appreciated by many so it might be a good idea to do this at your level.

Andy

Thanks. Link to your site? I want to check something out.

NorthernBuck

Andy wrote: »

Thanks. Link to your site? I want to check something out.

zrphoto.net

sorry I didn't get back to you quicker, I had to go run out for a bit.

Andy

you can do this with customizing, I'm sure. But we do millions of orders per year and hear only about so very few stories like yours. It'd be hard to clutter the UI with something that for 99+ % it's never an issue for. But again, you could put notices on your site about cookies if you like.

NorthernBuck

Did you take a look to see if I had something set up wrong? If I've had this happen at least 5 times and it looks like everything is set up correctly on my site then what are the odds it's happening more than you think and you aren't hearing about it? Thank you for your response.

Andy

NorthernBuck wrote: »

Did you take a look to see if I had something set up wrong? If I've had this happen at least 5 times and it looks like everything is set up correctly on my site then what are the odds it's happening more than you think and you aren't hearing about it? Thank you for your response.

Yup, your site is set up just fine.

NorthernBuck

Andy wrote: »

Yup, your site is set up just fine.

Thanks Andy, it was just an idea and I appreciate you letting me throw it at you and that you took the time to listen and then took it a bit further by at least making sure I had things set up ok. Have a great day.

Andy

NorthernBuck wrote: »

Thanks Andy, it was just an idea and I appreciate you letting me throw it at you and that you took the time to listen and then took it a bit further by at least making sure I had things set up ok. Have a great day.

Weird that you have a handful of customers that have cookies disabled.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

Weird that you have a handful of customers that have cookies disabled.

It is common for sites that require cookies to have code that checks if cookies are successfully sticking. This doesn't show for people that have cookies enabled and can be made to only show for the others when they engage in an operation that needs those cookies (like start using the cart). Does Smugmug not use any of this detection and warn code? If not, that would seem prudent with no downside to customers and plenty of upside to people selling.

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

It is common for sites that require cookies to have code that checks if cookies are successfully sticking. This doesn't show for people that have cookies enabled and can be made to only show for the others when they engage in an operation that needs those cookies (like start using the cart). Does Smugmug not use any of this detection and warn code? If not, that would seem prudent with no downside to customers and plenty of upside to people selling.

We do.

jfriend

Andy wrote: »

We do.

You have it on the full cart page, but you have nothing when you click the buy button, select some sizes you want to buy, put things into your cart and then click "back to photos". So you can merrily click along, thinking you are adding hundreds of things to your cart (one could literally spend hours doing this) and you aren't told anything about cookies (or lack thereof) until you hit the checkout button and then you find that all your previous work is gone (and then there's a message about cookies). This is obviously a pretty bad user experience.

You should not be allowed to think you're adding things to the cart when cookies are disabled.

There is no cookie notification in this screen which is where people do their actual business of putting things in the cart:

NorthernBuck

jfriend wrote: »

You have it on the full cart page, but you have nothing when you click the buy button, select some sizes you want to buy, put things into your cart and then click "back to photos". So you can merrily click along, thinking you are adding hundreds of things to your cart (one could literally spend hours doing this) and you aren't told anything about cookies (or lack thereof) until you hit the checkout button and then you find that all your previous work is gone (and then there's a message about cookies). This is obviously a pretty bad user experience.

You should not be allowed to think you're adding things to the cart when cookies are disabled.

There is no cookie notification in this screen which is where people do their actual business of putting things in the cart:

It's good to know something does show up at the cart level but jfriend is correct in that it is much more effective at keeping customers happy when they know this before spending many hours adding photos to a cart.

Andy

NorthernBuck wrote: »

It's good to know something does show up at the cart level but jfriend is correct in that it is much more effective at keeping customers happy when they know this before spending many hours adding photos to a cart.

I'll find out why it's not there in that spot.

NorthernBuck

Andy wrote: »

I'll find out why it's not there in that spot.

Did you figure out why it wasn't in that spot Andy?

Andy

NorthernBuck wrote: »

Did you figure out why it wasn't in that spot Andy?

Still talking about it here. Thanks.

bstep1

Any update on this issue? I just had a customer report the same problem and while the solution of deleting cookies works, if they don't know to do that until after they spend an hour looking through galleries and selecting photos, it doesn't make for a good experience. Also, there are still a lot of people out there who don't even know what cookies are, struggle with computers and will probably never complain. This really needs to be addressed somehow to insure our customers are getting a great and easy way to order prints.

Andy

bstep1 wrote: »

Any update on this issue? I just had a customer report the same problem and while the solution of deleting cookies works, if they don't know to do that until after they spend an hour looking through galleries and selecting photos, it doesn't make for a good experience. Also, there are still a lot of people out there who don't even know what cookies are, struggle with computers and will probably never complain. This really needs to be addressed somehow to insure our customers are getting a great and easy way to order prints.

Hi, it's not 'deleting cookies' it's making sure cookies are enabled. We see this extremely rarely and we're doing millions of orders. I'm sorry for the trouble, will take another look.