AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

We've had multiple customers experience issues while checking out. Anyone else experience this?

1) Checkout page timeout?
We get a few customers a week that call asking for order status, because they never received a confirmation email. When asked, they say that they filled out the checkout page, click Pay with Card, and then nothing happened. It sounds like the page just stays there, doesn't go to the confirmation page, and doesn't go to a "page unavailable" page. So they think the order went through. Some people even clicked multiple times, and nothing seemed to happen for them. On our end, they don't have an order, and there is no attempted charge in Authorize.net showing for them. Weird!

2) Complaints about shipping not displayed before purchase.
Now, I know for a fact that the shipping cost is displayed before a customer enters their credit card information. But, a few times a month customers cancel their orders within a day complaining that shipping was too high. I have a feeling it's buyer's remorse and they are fibbing that shipping wasn't displayed before they checked out. What about other peoples experience here?

I feel that most other checkouts on the internet have the total price, shipping etc listed VERY close to the PAY button, but in AC7, that info is all the way at the top right while the pay button is on the bottom left, and a lot of people don't have a monitor large enough to display the whole page. Any way of displaying the total, shipping, etc $ right next to pay button?

Checkout page timeout?
We still run AC 5.5, Windows Server 2003 & II6 and experience the same problem on the checkout page as you described in your post. I was hoping when we upgrade to AC 7.03 the problem would no longer exist.
We found that the customer enters their card data, clicks place order and the page will just sit there. The items still remain in the basket and no credit card transaction was recorded at Authorize.net.

Not sure what is the root cause is but, I was able to confirm the following:
-This problem only occurs with users of FireFox 2.0 or higher. We know this because we have a tracking program, which tells us the browser used to access the site.
-Occurs only about 20% of the time for FireFox users. I have a several customers that order monthly and once and awhile they experience the problem two or three time a year.
-Never experienced this problem with other browsers.
-The items still remain in the basket and no credit card transaction was recorded.
-Closing the browser then reopening the browser will usually correct the problem.

If you don’t have the right tracking programs in place to watch the details of the movement of the customer, most would just think the customer just abandoned the basket and moved on.

bigbangtech wrote:But, a few times a month customers cancel their orders within a day complaining that shipping was too high.

Generally, if the shipping gateways timed out or froze for whatever reason, the shipping charges will be either populated or non-populated. So it doesn't make sense that the customer wasn't "aware" of the "high" shipping cost. I agree with you - customer found a different deal somewhere else and is making excuses to cancel the order with you.

I get a few calls each month where people say "I can't figure out your site" or "Your checkout doesn't work." I test my checkout process every so often using multiple browsers and never see an issue. The vast majority of the callers are seniors so I've been chalking it up to poor computer skills.

Lately I'm getting several people who can't seem to "find" where to enter the coupon code. It seems very obvious to me during checkout on the right side of the second page. Not quite sure how to address that one - I'm almost wondering if people are afraid they will be "committed" to the order if they continue and don't see the coupon code on the first page of checkout.

If I may throw in my two cents worth. I too get phone calls from people who are having difficulty checking out. I'm sure that AJAX is confusing some people bouncing around areas of the page. I wouldn't mind if it was disabled.

I also think the Billing Address and Shipping address fields should be next to each other. I think there is enough room for that. I was shopping on this website and I really liked their onepagecheckout. It seems very clean and easy to use. I want it!