Dear sylvester,
The reason why so many of your customers vanish after thy have pressed
the "Order Now" button, although they are obviously willing to buy the
product, lies within the iFulfill.com shopping system you utilize.
I followed the order process right from the first page. Everything
went well, untill I pressed "Order Now" on page 5. I was directed to a
page displaying this error message instead of an order form:
"There are no items in your cart.
You may have received this message due to one of the following
reasons:
1. You did not specify a quantity
2. You have cookies turned off in your browser.
3. You have completely emptied your cart.
4. You may have entered a non-numeric value in the quantity box on the
previous page.
5. Attention Internet Explorer 6.0 users: You may have received this
message due to the default privacy settings in Internet Explorer 6.0.
iFulfill.com is implementing electronic privacy methods that will
provide the signature required by Internet Explorer 6.0. In the
meantime, if you are a user of Internet Explorer 6.0, select TOOLS,
INTERNET OPTIONS, and set your privacy settings to low and select
APPLY. You may then resume your shopping session."
I am quite sure that you have never encountered this message so far,
otherwise you would have surely noticed this. Now, what about these 5
possible reasons for the error?
1. The quantity problem is not of any significance here since a basic
order quantity schould be defined automatically after pressing the
"Order Now" button.
2. I did not have turned off cookies in my browser, so this is not the
reason for the malfunction, too.
3. Since the cart is filled automatically, it can't be emptied before
accessing the order form page, so this is not the problem either.
4. There was no quantity to enter anywhere, as specified above.
5. This is it! I tested it by changing the privacy settings of my
Internet Explorer 6.0 to "low" - after doing so, it worked fine and I
was able to access the order form.
Now, what exactly happens with your "vanishing customers"? Currently,
approximately 45%-50% of all Web users utilize Internet Explorer 6.
Most of them have, I presume, not changed the default privacy
settings, others might have even put it to a higher level. Many people
today are susceptible and mistrustful when it comes to questions of
online privacy. Now they try to order something - and are told
immediately to lower the privacy settings of their browsers. But their
concerns against doing so are too strong, so they rather dispense with
buying the product. The link "Our Privacy Statment" provided by
iFulfill.com does not lessen their anxiety, since such links are
rarely clicked.
Of course, there are also people who do not dare changing any settings
in their computers, because of their lack of experience or a general
fear of making something wrong.
And then there are others who just see the dark blue screen with the
repelling small white instructions and take it for some error message.
Without closer inspection of it, they think "This thing does not work"
and simply turn away annoyed.
The resumé is: The iFulfill.com shopping cart system you have
integrated in your website causes for a huge share, even the majority
of visitors and possible buyers a deterring effect which keeps them
from ordering, either because of infuriation, denegation, or
uncertainty.
I do, of course, not know whether you had special reasons for choosing
iFulfill.com. But in order to win back the Internet Explorer 6 users
as customers, I recommend changing to another order and fulfillment
service, with asking and making sure before that the technology they
use does not require customers to adjust their computer settings; or
that at least only a clear minority of customers would have to do so.
I hope, my analysis helps you improving your website and thus getting
more buyers for your product!
Best regards,
Scriptor |
Clarification of Answer by
scriptor-ga
on
06 Nov 2002 13:48 PST
Dear sylvester,
At the moment, I have a number of people with different computer
systems testing your website. You will note that additional
Researchers are posting their experiences as comments below.
So far, all results confirm that the technical problem I discovered
and analyzed is indeed what keeps many customers from successfully
ordering your product.
Concerning your complaint: Your question stated clearly the following:
"(...) many continue to the last page and press the button for "order
now".But
then surprisingly many do not "complete order" ,they vanish somewhere
in between.What have I done wrong?"
Doubtless, I have found the problem, which is a technical one, why
many customers press "Order Now", but then dissapear. This was the
task given in your original question. You did, I'm afraid, not request
a rewiev of your website. In case you really also need such a review,
I humbly recommend making this the topic of a second question.
I will let you know the results of the technical tests currently in
progress.
Best regards,
Scriptor
|
Clarification of Answer by
scriptor-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 12:24 PST
Dear sylvester,
After my colleagues have completed testing your website, as you can
see in the comment section below, I am now able to present you the
final results:
- 8 persons have tested your site
- 6 different web browsers were used: IE 5.2, IE 5.5, IE 6.0, Opera
6.03, Mozilla, Netscape 7.0. Of these, IE 6.0 had the largest share of
6 tests, the others 1 test each; this equals roughly the shares of
browsers among the average web audience.
- Of those testing your site using IE 6.0 and IE 5.5, not a single one
was able to get past the blue error screen as described by me.
- All others were able to proceed to the order form.
This means, your website suffers of a major technical problem: Users
of Internet Explorer 6.0 and 5.5, making the majority of the web
audience, can't order anything as long as they don't change their
privacy settings. It has nothing at all to do with the wording of your
website or the visual design - it's a matter of technical
incompatibility.
I hope this answers your question.
Best regards,
Scriptor
|
,
9 Comments
)