How Not to Sell Online

Monday November 28 2011 - , , , ,

This is a copy of an email that I just sent to StarDock corporation regarding my experience attempting to purchase ‘Fences’.

Not selling many copies of Fences? Your store page and purchase process is badly broken.

First, the Buy Now button on your product page results in a 404 Not Found message. But I’m smarter than that, I went to the StarDock Store home page and searched for the product there and I was able to click the Buy button there.

The page for entering payment details offers credit card or PayPal. I always use PayPal for online transactions. But on your page, I’m required to enter a credit card number in order to click the PayPal button. I get number required even when I click the Continue button for PayPal. I can’t get to PayPal unless I enter a credit card number. Not cool.

But it gets better! I tried entering a random credit card number just to get past the screen, and I noticed that the error message updates in real time. The credit card input box tells me, character by character, whether I’ve entered a valid credit card number. So I can use that page to guess other people’s valid credit card numbers!!!!!

And the final insult: having successfully navigated around all these speed bumps to get to my PayPal account and confirm my payment: Yellow screen of death and no license.

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I was keen to purchase this software. I went out of my way to work around the problems. But it’s almost like you’re trying to prevent me from purchasing. I reckon you owe me a free copy for the time I spent composing this problem report ;-)