LensWork publishes a gorgeous magazine with superb printing and superb photography. It has, however, a truly convoluted purchase process on its Web site. This is the second time I fell into its maze and am now writing to describe the flow. See if it makes sense to you, it does not to me. I hope Brooks Jensen will read this and do something about the checkout process. Their Web site needs an overhaul anyway, it has the look and feel of a 1998 Web site, still using table structure for layout, and inline styling every single P tag. No wonder they make me run around the checkout process. I am available for consulting or full site design, (a little plug for my services here!)
- I purchased the latest edition of LensWork Extended Portable copy, see the first image and note on the right hand side it says “Checkout or Checkout with PayPal”. I wanted to pay via PayPal and I clicked on the button
- Now, I am logged in to my PayPal account and it tells me “Continue, You will confirm your payment on LensWork Publishing” so I click on “Continue”
- Now, I am back at LensWork and their system asks me to login, and I comply
- It finds my information, (I am not sure if I should jump with joy)
- It gives me a chance to pay (second chance?) optionally with PayPal (I was just there!)
- I choose the PayPal option once more and find myself at PayPal and login
- Déjà vu (all over again!)
- I click on continue and where do I find myself … (see step 4!)
- Oh, now I can “Place your order”, THANK YOU!
- The download link finally appears
This is totally unacceptable. I have been teaching marketing on the Internet since 1996 and this violates everything I try to teach my students. Minimum clicks, period. Ten confusing and repetitious steps to purchase a downloadable item is truly laughable today.
Repeat after me, three steps: Buy-Pay-Thank you!
Take a look at the screen captures, they follow the narrative numbering above:
Flora
Infrared Earthscapes
Junk Yard