The biggest problem with all the sites is they have don’t have an index of terms.
You can struggle for the longest time to get into the right department.
I wanted to find an umbrella to place by my pool. If you search on “umbrella”, you get hand models. If you know the terms, you can search on “umbrella with stand”, “commercial umbrella”, “café umbrella”, “patio umbrella”, etc.
But why not just have one big list of items (the paper catalogs call it an index), all on one page that you can search down.
Some painful shopping sites have an “index” that only shows a couple dozen things at a time, out of thousands.
Even if you search under “U”, you may have to hit Next many many times before Umbrella appears. The wrong umbrella at that.
I’d like to see them all put the shipping charges up front. Some sites charge a lot for “shipping and handling” which is really just skewing the price comparison.
And they shouldn’t make you enter your payment information before you can see those charges.
I vehemently second that! Some sites give you the option of entering your shipping zip code to get an “estimated” shipping price. It’s generally not too far off from the actual price you get once you’ve placed an order. The best sites have a link to their standard shipping prices on every page of their site.
Oh, and what’s with “This price is so low we can’t display it. Add it to your shopping cart to see the price?” I’m looking at you, Amazon. Do people really fall for that? Well gee, it’s already in my cart so I guess I have to buy it now.
One thing I would improve is to have more sites offer enlargement of product images. And if you’re going to offer image enlargement, don’t link to same size image, fercryinoutloud!
And reviews. Every site should have customer product reviews. I find these invaluable when shopping for things I can’t touch and try out for myself. Thank you, Amazon.
There’s a new shopping widget that I think is pretty cool. It shows up as a toolbar on your IE and goes out and finds the best prices for whatever you have chosen on a particular site. I don’t think it works for all products yet, but it’s getting there. It’s NOT spyware/adware, they don’t share your shopping information with anyone.
Once or twice, I’ve gone through a twisted, user-grumpy trail to the checkout, only to find I had to go back to square one to register, then do it all again. Site designers like that should be taken out and shot.
McAfee sends me e-mails offering a price on a package deal. When I go to the website, though, I can’t find the deal.