Site Review

[NFerguson]

Hello,

I'm working on a site: www.Be-A-Star-Publishing.com

As you can tell the site is not finished but I wanted to get some feedback before I finished it completely. I'm having a problem with the way I want to take orders - most of my customers are grandparents from a rural area who don't really like using the internet to place an order. I was thinking just having a form where they would tell me which item they are interested in then I would either call them or email me with the questions I need answered to complete their order. Suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks,
Nicole

[justinpowell]

Nicole:

Overall, I really like your site! Your design is clean and whimsical while you have sufficient content to enable potential customers to understand what you provide and make a buying decision. I think it scores on all levels.

My biggest concern aligns with yours: how do you process transactions for people who are uncomfortable with e-commerce? Here's a few thoughts:

- Adding too many steps to the process will only make people feel more uncomfortable - easy is better.

- Having people complete the financial aspects of the transaction via e-mail is unsecure and puts their personal information at risk; as a result it potentially makes your firm liable if there is a loss

- I would consider adding e-commerce for those users that are comfortable enough purchasing online (e-commerce usage among senior citizen is growing) and using a solution like the PayPal Shopping Cart can be low cost for you and easy to implement.

- I would consider a printable, mail-in order form for those users that still want an offline purchase method.

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

[smbwallace]

Hi Nicole, I love both your publishing site and your magazine site and am going to go back and subscribe to your magazine.

I would only make the ordering from your publishing website as easy and with as few a steps as possible. Could parents order right then over the Internet? Could grandparents just call you with their order?

Great job on both.

[NFerguson]

Thanks for the feedback. :D I'm pretty new at adding e-commerce to a site - and requiring personalized information has become a brain teaser. What about this:

On the order page, I will have a form asking for all of the information for the book to be personalized. Then once they submit the form it will take them to a page to pay via paypal ~or~ should I tell them I will invoice them via paypal.

Ok, let me go start working on this form.

Nicole

[smbwallace]

When I am placing an order I like to get it all done right then in as few steps as possible. If I were you I would get the payment right then. If possible set it up so you can take credit cards too.

[justinpowell]

Nicole:

You are right on with how the process would work:
- You would have a form on your site to take all of the personalization and shipping information necessary to complete the customer's order
- When they click submit on the form, they're handed to the PayPal site to submit payment; your information is already encoded when it gets to Paypal, so they know what the transaction amount is and what merchant to send payment to.
- PayPal takes their percentage and sends an electronic transfer into your checking account


Justin