Online Buying Guide
Hey guys
Many many times in the past 5 years I have had access to Internet, I was faced with a situation where just having common sense was not enough. For example, faced with the "Buy" button at a "ahem" site having your favorite product on display at a unbelievably cheap price. Is it too good to be true? More often that not, it is. Now I will set out some "non-techie" ground rules which will greatly simplify the process for you. After that clicking on that feared "Buy" button wont be that scary at all.
Hope you like the effort
Brand Name Sites
The first site which comes to mind when you read "online etailer" is newegg. Now NewEgg (NE henceforth) has become a heretoforth benchmark and more-often-than-not you come accross situations where "business owners" in famous IT streets in INDIA (of the top of my head, Lamington Road, SP Road, Richie Street, etc.) are QUOTED prices from NE and are asked to do a price match. And guess what, MANY OBLIDGE. That goes to show us how having a "simple YES intuitive" design and strict adherence to "customer service" can set your stores' name in people's mind. But enough about NE, lets see what makes it kick and how does it apply to our guide:
Top section of NE homepage:
Bottom section of the same homepage:
The bottom section interests me much more.....
Jokes apart, I would like to focus upon some very important salient features in these 2 screen shots....- Lets see the top part highlighted in this screenshot:
When a E-trailer (or any site accepting any form of payment, be it Credit cards, Paypal, etc.) requests their merchant/bank to allow them to do transactions over the Internet, it is served with a set of compliance rules which it must adhere to before it is permitted any merchant rights.
Two of the main ones are:- Transparency: This is mandated in the form of allowing the customers to view the VIEWS of other customers. Whats better than allowing them straight unhindered access? NE comes out with shining colors in this department.
- Easy access to ones one personal information: This is served by the easily visible and ACCESSIBLE login page. Now, how does this differentiate NE from other sites (questionable even?) Lets see for ourshelves. When we click on Login, we are presented with this:
Do you notice the yellow tinge of the address bar and the https: protocol before the URL and the "LOCK" icon at the bottom edge of the browser window? Plus clicking on the URL didnt redirect us out of NE, instead it took us to a subdomain called "secure.newegg.com." These 3 seal the deal ON the validity and PHYSICAL existance of the NE business operation. Now even if NE mucks up your order or falsely/mistakenly charges your credit card, you are assured that you wont be faced with a situation where you have "NO ONE" to report to the authorities.
- But now you should ask yourself, why AM I reiterating that the above 3 facts give a preety good indication of the validity of the site and the business operation as a whole? Well its because:
- To get a security certificate from one of the AUTHORITIES which manages them, it is required that your business must have a physical presence and be registered with their respective government. Ofcourse one could employ temporarily generated certificates but in that case, your browser window would through a nice WARNING saying that the "CERTIFICATE" is from a un trusted source. Like so:
- Also, have a quick look at the bottom half of the NE homepage (no need to scroll up, I have highlighted and cropped the screenshot for your convinience.) Here:
The salient points:
- VeriSign secured: This is one of the behemoth organizations which are largely responsible for the issuing of the certificates which allow the site to have and flaunt a https: address and provide secure and un breakable communication to the end user. Getting a VeriSign secure authorization is not a easy task. It follows and adheres to very stringent procedures before issuing the certificate and ensures that the business is answerable for all its deals and transactions. This puts a FACE to the website, thus taking the trust to another level altogether.
- TrustE: Fooling one organization like VeriSign is hard enough, now make that two. Now its a common practice among all major trustable e-tailers to obtain certifications from at least these 2 organizations. This ensures that the amount of trust you put on the site is not misused in any case. For example, some of the regulations require that the "SITE OPERATORS" (for example NE admins and floor managers) THEMSHELVES change their password every 3 working days and have alteast 12 unique characters in them. Thats because they have access to such information which a normal user wont have and therefore are very CRITICAL.
- To get a security certificate from one of the AUTHORITIES which manages them, it is required that your business must have a physical presence and be registered with their respective government. Ofcourse one could employ temporarily generated certificates but in that case, your browser window would through a nice WARNING saying that the "CERTIFICATE" is from a un trusted source. Like so:
All these combined with a general word of mouth (ex: Tim: Hey yo! Hows this site www.newegg.com ma beetch? Tom: Yo dawg! Its a awesome and "secure" site yo!) should give you enough confidence to proceed with whatever orderes you might have in your mind.
Now lets proceed to not-so-popular-or-well-known sites:
Uncommon Small Sites
For no particular reason I choose to review a Australian site called Forwarding to the Online Shop!
Now lets have a look:
Top section:
Cute I must say, I mean who can hate Penguins? Right?
Bottom half:
Err, was it just me or we did not notice any certification information what so ever? Lets proceed to the login (I am not highlighting the features now as surely your eyes must be preety adept to searching for them by now.)
Lets proceed to the Login page:
Thumbs up for coolpc. The login page seems secure but one things comes in my mind:
Take a look at the bottom right part of the screen shots. Evidently, some images are missing. The direct interpretation of this is:
A site which is not able to maintain its own site properly can NOT be trusted with critical financial information.
Well for 90% customers atleast. And the next thing they do is hit froogle to search for the next site. For the 10% that decide or are desparate to get hold of a particular item (for example a Tuniq Tower 120), its a game of luck hence forth. Sure, you have a FACE to the SITE. But more often than not, you will end up loosing time and (hopefully not) some money when dealing with these sites.
Most of the times, these small over looks are because the site is small in magnitude and doesnt have the manforce to keep all aspects of the site working. But the more heinous version of this reads like this: A quick mock up site thrown in to make some quick bucks of a few thousand bucks and then disappear of the face of Earth (actually Internet, but I always tend to me Theratrical
) Both the scenarious are equally possible, so you must ask around before ordering anything from such a site. Unless ofcourse you have too much money or someone handling your personal finances for you coughchaos cough: )Conclusion
Well I have tried my best to give you a primer on what one should look at before making any purchase from "ANY" e-trailer. Now it should almost come instinctively to you whether a site is trustable or not. Ofcourse never belay word of mouth because past experience of customers speaks louder than a 1000 certifications.
To summarize:
- Look for a SIMPLE approach at building the site. All critical and business related information should be available in the front page itself.
- Look for "https" address when entering any critical information including your username and password.
- Look for certifications. Most e-tailers which go throught the painful (almost) process of getting them LIKE to flaunt them in the home page itself. So you should not have to look very hard to find them.
- I cannot ASSERT MORE ON THIS, ask your friends, particularly those who have some experience at SHOPPING ONLINE. There words should take preference over these guidelines, should they ever disagree.
I hope you guys liked my effort. I just came back from office and saw the announcement by QuickFire. I had some recent experience in online shopping (RiO can probably write a saga about it) and thus wanted to share whatever I had learnt from it.
Hope it was useful
Karan
PS: Reps welcome :clap:
@mods: please dont resize the pics, its critical for the flow of the article
