Occassional shopping cart problems

[Christylh]

We have been getting a higher influx of orders recently and subsequently have been notified by the occassional customer that they can't get into the cart any futher than the initial cart screen.

When they hit "checkout now" it takes them backwards to the screen before or to the default home page. This is when the .pl files come into play.

Please feel free to browse around: http://www.uniformcorner.com and play test an item into the cart.

I asked the last customer what browser they were using, but she kept answering me with the ISP. She didn't know what she was using, more or less.

How much does keeping the OS & browser updated with the most recent technology play into being able to check out through Actinic? Is it a javascript issue?

What can I tell these customers whom I am assuming have problem systems?

Thanks!

Christy

[wjcampbe]

I tried this in IE6, Firefox and Mozilla and did not see the behaviour as reported. All three browsers took me first to the choose state, then address and billing pages.

Mozilla threw a few unencrypted data warnings at me and I noted you have a secure checkout padlock logo top right of your checkout pages, but no https address. That would have put me off if I was a genuine customer (the claim to be secure when its not).

[BPJSURF]

its possiable the customer was running a firewall that supressed cookies. This can cause unusal behaviors. The best way to track down problem of this nature is to look closely at your log files . Pay attention to errors in the log to track down the culprit. There are a number of "enhancements" that can be done to your website when your getting volume traffic. You want to make sure your host is running mod_perl to improve the performance of the scripts. As well you may want some advance reporting to follow visitor behaviors so that you can improve site useability.

I tested in firefox 1.03 and IE 6 sp2 all ok.

Brian

[Christylh]

William, we are working on that- some changes in our SSL will be coming soon. I put the secure checkout icon on there to let people know they would eventually get to a secure area once they put in more vital info, but I agree is isn't up to par.

Brian, I will definitely do as recommended and check with my ISP/host on some of these issues.

But does in fact a less frequently upgraded system have problems with ecommerce transactions in general? What can I recommend to our customers other than to tell them about potential problems caused by firewalls? Should I recommend Windows Update for those appropriate?

[BPJSURF]

Updating windows to current patches (particularly security patches) is important I would encourge users to keep their software current becuase of the problems with security vunerabilities and attacks. However its not a perfect world and many users will lag in the upgrade process. The best thing todo is provide a well tested stable website and checkout enviroment which your confident in its operation. One good thing about using Actinic software is there are literally thousands of sites using the same exact enviroment, scripts and software that your using on the site. So you should have more confidence in your sites ability to process orders based on the wide scale deployment of other merchants. If there is an issue in the software which causes problems then you will definitly be reading about the problem here because there will be many post to the comunity. Back in Febuary of 2004, Microsoft issued a security patch which caused problem with SSL sites. It was not a good time for 26 days while users installed the patch and could not check out securely without issues. However when Microsoft released the next security patch in March (they released it early actually because the febuary patch was so screwed up) the issues were resolved.

Overall as a webmaster I would keep a high level of confidenece in the Actinic software enviroment, it works on a mass scale of users and is very well supported. I do strongly recomend a full SSL certificate for checkout as this will improve the user expereince and will increase your confidence in the website envireoment.

Brian

[Christylh]

Brian,

I am very confident in the Actinic environment. For every fifty customers who have no problems there is only one who does, which led me to believe I needed some relevant information to give them about what they can do on their side.

For example, if I can get answers about the troubled customer's system I find out things like they are using NetZero and the NetZero provided browser, however I can't seem to get an answer from NetZero's tech support about what the browser is based in (is it a skinned IE?, etc.)

Most of them with a problem don't have a clue what the difference is between a browser and ISP though.

I did contact our host ISP about a few things and got this response:

"The server hosting uniformcorner.com is running mod_perl. However, it's availability to user scripts is limited due to security constraints because it is a shared-hosting server. As an alternative, this server also supports PHP, ASP, and JSP."

This may be part of the issue but we are not in a position to pick up a new database language, we just need straight HTML and the environment that Actinc provides.

Any more advice would be helpful. Thanks!

[Nadeem]

Hi Christy,

NetZero and the NetZero provided browser, however I can't seem to get an answer from NetZero's tech support about what the browser is based in (is it a skinned IE?, etc.)

This is the one thing that needs answering, is it a skinned IE or a their own bespoke browser. One thing you could ask the client in question, is if they can, download firefox and test your site with it. See if the issue exist after that. If not, then the issue points to NetZero browser.

Kind Regards