Usability Failings – The Painful Maplin Experience
Recently, I had to buy a range extender for my wifi connection this morning, and after checking out a lot of reviews and prices, I plumped for the SCOM 300N and decided to get it from Maplin.
Once on the Maplin site, one of the largest electronics retailers in the UK, the problems began. The search box uses a database query to bring up possible items you could be looking for whilst typing in your search query:
Usability Failing No.1 – The Search Box
Through large sites such as amazon and ebay employing these live ajax search queries, a lot of users will be used to how they work. You start typing, cursor or mouse down to the item you want and press enter or click. Upon selecting the desired product, the site malfunctions and reloads the home page with a few extra parameters to the url (https://www.maplin.co.uk/Home.aspx?sxs=0&sxs=0&sxs=0&sxs=0&sxs=0)
This is a major failing on maplin’s part. I would suggest visitors coming to a site, knowing what they’re wanting to buy, would much rather search, than guess which category the product has been placed in, so getting the search functionality right is paramount to a large sites conversion rates.
I’m quite a stubborn user. If I want to by something from somewhere, I’ll continue to use the site until my patience runs out. Being a web designer/developer, I would say this is longer than a ‘normal’ user. Once I’d managed to find my product and put it in my basket, I went to the checkout…
Usability Failing No.2 – Adding extra items to my basket
This has stopped me buying anything from maplin ever again and made me extremely angry. So I click on checkout only to find that Maplin have added their own 2010 catalogue to my basket at a cost of £3.99! Whoever thought that was a good idea just needs shooting. When was the last time you were out shopping and employees of a store started putting things in your basket for you to find when you got to the till? Do retailers think that just because you’re buying on the web they can do outrageous things like that?
Usability Failing No. 3 – Unexpected Detours
Having got past my anger and removed the catalogue from my basket, I went to pay at the checkout. I prefer using paypal for obvious reasons and was presented with this screen:
Now, having gone to my basket and clicked ‘Check Out with Paypal’ as a regular paypal user, I’d expect to be taken through to the paypal sign in screen.Wrong! I was taken to this sign-up screen:
As you can see, there’s no way of purchasing from Maplin without signing up to their newsletter. If I’m buying from someone using paypal, there is no reason to directly give them any of my details. Everything is contained within paypal. That’s a lot of the pleasure of using paypal.
So now after having to sign up (obviously using a junk email address), I’m put through to paypal, and everything goes smoothly… until…
Usability Failing No. 4 – Shipping
After completing the paypal side of things, I’m returned to the Maplin site to ‘complete’ the order.On returning to the site, having just paid through paypal, I’m presented with this screen.
Firstly, I notice that I’ve now been given a shipping option. Luckily, my order was over £35, and I was ok with Free Standard UK, but if I wanted next day, or the purchase had been under the free shipping threshold, how would I have paid for that? Would I have been taken back to paypal to add the extra in a other transaction? Surely adding in all costs before going to checkout is a normal thing? To me, it’s just another way of getting people to part with more money. The user has gone through this whole process, and now they have to add in shipping, which most of the time the online store is making another 20% on.
Usability Failing No. 5 – Terms & Conditions
Like a lot of sites, you can’t buy from them unless you agree to their t’s & c’s. That’s fair enough, they’re just covering themselves. So after what I’ve just been though, I wanted to have a look at the t&c’s just in case… I click on it and it brings them up… in the same window.
The vast majority of terms & conditions and privacy notices are brought up in pop up windows for good reason. Most of them are on form sensitive pages like a checkout, or email signup etc.
When clicking back to complete my order, I’m now presented with the dreaded ‘Confirm Form Resubmission’ page rather that my order. If I wasn’t so ‘web aware’, I wouldn’t know how to get back to confirm my order.
Conclusion
I buy a lot of things online, but overall I’d have to say that this is one of the most painful online shopping experiences of my life. I honestly wonder what the drop-out rates are through the process and even on that last ‘confirm my order’ page. I’d imagine them to be unusually high. Anyway, that’s just my opinion and I’d love to hear from the Maplin UI team, or anyone else who’s had the same kind of issues.