Force a Customer to Login – Lose a sale?

Why oh why do people insist on making you login to a site to make a purchase? Well if that is not bad enough I came across a site that makes you sign up and login just to view the products!

So as I really want to spend some of my hard earned and I have bought from these guys catalogue before so I decide to give it ago and fanny around with the signup. The signup involves a double opt in scenario, which is cool I suppose, but I am losing my patience, remember this is just to look at the products at this stage.

Just a side note here, the menus don’t work if you have JS turned off:

So now comes the real beef, the clickpath down to a product to get the item in the basket is lengthy.

1. Click designer wear from JS dropdown menu
2. Pick a brand type (not ideal because I am after shirts and I don’t know which ones have shirts)
3. Click item from list
4. Click to choose size
5. Click to choose colour
6. “This item is out of stock”, in a light colour, that does not draw my eye. So I find myself looking for an add to cart button, then I notice this out of stock BS!

There is an option to add to wishlist, but what I really wish for is the ability to tell the owner of the site that they need to cut down the number of clicks to add a product to the cart, but above all, don’t allow me to go down a fruitless path.

OK they have tried a little, there is a drop down box to choose between “show all items” and “show only in stock” but I did not notice this until my third attempt so I got the hump and left the site, no idea how good the checkout is, but who cares.

I had my debit card out and I was about to buy £2-500 worth of clobba, but was thawted early on.

So the major lessons:

1. Dont force a login just to view the products.
2. Tell me before I try and buy the product, select sizes and the like etc if the product is out of stock.

Footnote:

I was not sure if I should link to the sites that I generally will be criticising, but I decided it cant be that bad, hell they might even take action. So the link is:

Brandswear.com

(also have a word with someone about the redirect, that be doing you no favours chief!)