Customer address not clearing

[espresso]

Hi all, first post here. Hope someone can help. Am evaluating Actinic v10.0.2. Have just raised this with Support, but thought I would also post it to the excellent community on here.

Basically my problem relates to this scenario:

A user has gone to check out and has filled in their address and proceeded to the next step, but then does not finish the checkout process.

Irrespective of whether they selected "remember me" or not, their address details are retained. No matter whether they close the browser or press cancel - there is no way for them to clear their address details.

The only two options for the user appear to be:

1) Clear the cookies in their browser
2) Wait for the session to expire (this could be a number of hours - depends on the setting in Actinic - the absolute minimum is one hour)

Neither of these is satisfactory to me as I do not think an average user would realise these and would expect their personal details not to be retained on the computer unless they had specified "remember me".

I've searched the advanced user guide and forums and found the excellent workaround which reprograms the "Cancel" button on the checkout pages to clear all cookies. However, this relies on Javascript - when Javascript is disabled, the reprogrammed "cancel" button does absolutely nothing at all. Also, it does not solve the problem of a user abandoning the checkout by closing their browser and expecting to have their details cleared.

The reason I see this as an issue is the fact that users may be on a shared computer. I do not think it is reasonable for a user to have no easy way of clearing their personal details once entered.

I think it's great that the shopping cart contents can be retained in case they come back again - but I want a way for the customer's address (and other personal details like phone number, vat number) to be cleared.

If anyone has any thoughts / ideas / hacks at all, it would be hugely appreciated. I had a go at the code myself but didn't really get anywhere as I do not really have enough knowledge of Perl or of the Actinic source (my background is in ASP / HTML / CSS).

Thanks for reading!
Paul

[leehack]

It's their details and their browser, it's their responsibility to clear IMO. Unless you ask them a direct question "are you definitely never ever coming back", i don't see that you can make any sensible deductions, after all they are not providing anything that is not available to the public domain anyway. I think you're overthinking things, but i do like the attention to detail.

[espresso]

Thanks very much for the super quick response! I really appreciate you taking the time to answer. I'm afraid I don't share your stance though. I don't think personal information should be persisted unless a user has explicitly asked for it to be.

Surely that's the point of the "remember me" check box? Surely with that being unchecked a user would not expect their information to be stored for hours after they click "cancel" and/or close their browser after having changed their mind about their purchase?

Also, I think the majority of internet users out there are not very technical and probably don't think to clear their cookies after visiting a website.

I was happy with the "cancel" button hack until I realised it wouldn't work at all for users with Javascript disabled. Does anyone have any ideas how to achieve the same thing via a change to the Perl scripts instead? Surely shouldn't be too difficult - but as I say, I'm someone familiar enough with the source code or Perl to manage it.

The other approach I thought of would be to make the ACTINIC_CART a non-persistant "session" cookie rather than a persistant cookie with an expiry date/time. Again, I've not managed to work out how to do this though - and am also not sure whether it would have any undesirable side-effects.

Any thoughts appreciated!

Thanks again,
Paul

[espresso]

PS. I do understand your point about "their responsibility to clear". However, I don't think this should rely on them having to delete cookies manually. I feel the "Cancel" button should acheive this - or that there should be a "Clear details" button. I believe in everything being as user-friendly as possible and also not relying on users to have any technical knowledge whatsoever.

[leehack]

I understand your angle, my problem is that you are guessing as to what the press of the cancel button means. I've clicked cancel if a phone has rang, door has knocked or wife has come over to see what am i buying for her for instance. Unless you have an explicit button stating exactly what that press will do and means, i think it's dangerous to assume what that press means.

What's your worst case scenario that could happen? A user on a shared PC can have their address details obtained, i can understand the intrusive feel of that, but in real terms what will it mean could happen?

This sounds like the sort code and account number worry to me, where if you ask someone for sort code and account number so you could pay them some money, they'd go oh no i'm not giving that. But if you asked them to pay you with a cheque, they'd gladly do it without a flinch, despit said cheque having exactly that information on it.

It will generally be an arduous task to adjust the Perl scripts, one fraught will possible problems and the need to keep redoing after interim upgrades.

[espresso]

Thanks once again for your reply. Those are all very valid points.

I did really liked the code in the advanced user guide that makes the "cancel" button clear the cookies. It pops up a warning first explaining this to the user and letting them choose whether or not to go ahead with it. That seems a good enough solution to this issue.

However, it doesn't work at all with Javascript turned off, so I'm not sure what to do. You may be right that it's best to leave the Perl scripts alone.

I suppose I could block users from checking out if they have javascript disabled (though that might lose potential customers I guess). What do people think? Has anyone else written code to stop users proceeding with Javascript disabled? Would anyone want to share their approach or any other ideas?

Thanks again for responding so quickly!
Paul

[espresso]

PS. I also understand your concern about "guessing what the cancel button means". I would prefer the cookies to be cleared by a user closing the browser, but that seems more complicated to implement. That's why I thought the "cancel" button could be a workaround. It could even be renamed to "clear and cancel" or something.

My feel is that if a user doesn't click "remember me" and then closes their browser, they would not expect their name, address, telephone number and email to be stored. I certainly wouldn't anyway. They are not stored if the order is completed, so I feel they shouldn't be if an order is aborted - unless a user has chosen to save their cart or click "remember me" or something explicit like that so they expect their details to be retained.