Why do site’s make it hard for me to give them my money? I’m “here”, I’ve got my credit card in hand, I’ve got stuff in my cart but then you go fuck it all up with a horrible checkout process.

Ten minutes ago GuitarCenter.com lost an easy $250 sale: My iPod broke today, they sell iPods, I have a $200 gift card, know they carried ‘em, put one in my cart but right when the sale should have been a slam dunk they shat all over themslevs.

So, what happened? Well, the iPod is $250 and my gift card is for $200. I get to the payment screen, select “gift card” and see the following sentence:

To use your gift card with another form of payment, please call 1-866-498-7882.

So, now I have to get up off my ass, get my phone, call some number, go through some shitty “press 1 for deez nuts” type menu process… eh, fine. So I call, dance through their stupid menus and, finally, Hector picks up. Midway through explaining why I’m calling I started thinking:

Fuck, now I have to spell my name for him 5 times ’cause the odds of him getting “Sarkissian” right the first time are slim to none… then I gotta rattle off the the gift card number followed by the pin. Next I’m going to have to read of my CC# & its expiration date for the balance. After that we’ll go through the whole “can you say that again” business with my billing address and shipping address. Fuck this… I could’ve order it on Amazon already.

So, I hung up. It’s stupid. Giving you money shouldn’t be a pain in my ass.

Ya, I’m lazy – that’s why I’m shopping from my couch instead of going to the actual store. Calling people to order stuff? Really? This isn’t 1993 is it? The web is so much more convenient: I don’t have to spell shit over the phone & pray to God that the underpaid, “i hate this fucking job” saying CSR actually types my shipping address in correctly.

So, anyways… I hung up on poor Hector, cruised over to Amazon.com/ipod (a url I flat out guessed), clicked “add to cart”, picked 1 day shipping (Amazon Prime is the shit), they have my CC on file so there was none of that bullshit to deal with and, honestly, 45 seconds later my order was placed and I had an email confirmation in my mailbox.

Now I don’t expect every eCommerce site to have stuff setup 100% as awesomely as Amazon does but c’mon… that doesn’t mean your site has to suck ass. Amazon and others have done the hard work & spent all the R&D money figuring out the user flows that maximize the “add to cart” to checkout ratio. Just fucking copy them.

Anyways – that’s my rant. If you’re getting into the eCommerce business please get it right; please make it easy for me to give you money!