Angry Pregnant Lady Part 2
Here is my happy little rant for the day. I went to the Blue Moons Fiber Arts site to order a skein of Lunasea in that new Silkie yarn, to try it out. It's a neat blend and who wouldn't want socks with silk in it? I was thinking it would make a fun baby knit.
I ordered 1 skein last week. So today I logged into their site to see if it was track-able. Well there was no order in there! So then i went to paypal and saw, no order in there which I knew I had selected that option to pay. (Granted, their site has a warning telling you to get a newer browser however you can still go through the entire order proccess despite that fact! It doesn't say if you don't upgrade you won't get yarn).
I'm not sure if you have ever purchased of their website but it requires IE 7 (vs IE 6, it does work for other browsers as well but I was at work and only had access to IE). It's the only fiber site I have ever tried to purchase on that required I update my browser. From a web design perspective it's not a smart move. You can lose customers that way and I am not going to upgrade my browser for their sock yarn. Heck ebay doesn't require IE 7, IE 6 works just fine! On top of that fact I normally order yarn on my lunch hour at work, so not only do I not want to upgrade my browser, but I cant even if I wanted too. I have IE 6.0.2, it's not exactly a cave man browser.
So I tried again just now to see, and it didn't go through again. I'm not a huge STR person, I purchased 1 skein of “Lucy” many moons ago (har har) and I don't even remember how I ordered it. I thought I might try out this new silkie yarn and see if I might catch the STR bug, but I am really frustrated that they would force me to update my browser to order yarn and on top of that, it didn't let me know the sale didn't go through. I was expecting my hank in the mail this week!
Most websites will show that IE 6 is the most common browser right now, and there for it is what at a minimum should be designed for. To be fair we can look at my sites stats, which users are primarily knitters...
IE 6: 19553 Requests
IE 7: 12467 Requests
Not only does IE 6 have more, but even if it was an even 50/50 split it would still be a bad choice, heck even if IE 6 had 40% and IE 7 had 60% it would STILL be a bad choice!!
I wonder how many sales they lose because of this and they might not even realize it. They are pretty popular so I suppose it might not be a big issue, but it really makes this pregnant lady angry, but then bad web design always does. For those of you who don't know I am an Information Architect & Usability Engineer so that’s pretty much what I do for a living, determine the proper way to design and execute websites for the optimal user experience and of course to make the most possible amount of money (I work for a fortune 100). I would bet all my stash they lose sales they don't even know about, just like this one.
(updated to correct my spelling, it made someone else angry)
Comments
Anne says;
Just about as dumb as the people who administer our childcare vouchers (system for paying part of our childcare pre-tax) - we can pay R's childminder online - but they "upgraded" their software, so now it only works on IE - what's worse, when it fails on Firefox, it fails silently - our childminder wasn't paid for 2 weeks - when we were sure we'd done it. NOT impressed! (Further research revealed that it does in fact work with both Opera and Safari, but still not with Firefox - the woman on the "help" desk (I kept trying to tell myself that it wasn't her fault, but boy did she do a good job of making me think it was!) was insistent that we had to use IE - or pay 25p per phonecall to use a premium rate line to make the transfer - er, no thanks!)
And breathe...
Janice in GA says;
Wonder if it works with Firefox at all? I hardly ever use IE anymore.
Liz says;
That's really weird! And I would be so bummed waiting for something that never came. I use mozilla and I've never had any problems ordering from BLue Moon. Maybe I should switch to IE to curb my spending :)
jess says;
Hm, I wonder if that's one of the changes they made in the new[ish] update to their site. I refuse to use IE in my personal time due to its poor design and security flaws (so when I do use it, I use it with javascript off, for example) -- however I have ordered from the BMFA site with firefox in the past week with no problem.
I too have a background in HCI/usability though these days I work mostly on the hidden backend of all of that stuff, architecting the data, not dealing with the user side of it. :)
Dani says;
Hey Pix, this is realllllly odd because I order from them (way too!!) regularly and *only* use Firefox here. The ONLY issue I ever had with ordering on their site was when I had a coupon AND wanted to pay with Pay Pal - the two don;t mix.
Have you emailed? JoAnn usually answers my emails, but ANY of the ladies there are FABULOUS about response time, and I know they would want to know you had a problem so they can fix it.
I just wish I knew why you had issue with a non-IE browser. (You know me - tech to the end *s*) I'm using FF 2.0.0.3 with a bunch of extensions fwiw...
tiennie says;
Hey Pixie:
If I remember correctly, don't you have a Mac? I use Safari to order from BMFA and it works just fine.
Hope you get your order. How frustrating! Especially when you're pregnant!
pixie says;
I do have a mac, but as I stated in the post I was at work on my lunch break with only IE at my disposal. I'm to irritated to give them my money at this point.
Patricia says;
Don't keep a pregnant knitter from purchasing yarn! Why don't you give them a call? They probably have no idea that their site is preventing you from shopping. The site is probably outsourced to a company that administrates it. Just remember that they're out there dying yarn and hope that the company they hired is taking care of business.
Amy says;
Have you thought about sending them a note and letting them know the issue? If you put it in the frame of that they are losing sales (and those IE stats are impressive too!) they might pay attention.