Ecommerce Solutions – Data Rejection

The first principle of validation and error-trapping is, don’t unless you have to.
Data Rejection
There are so many painful examples of data being rejected in checkout because it doesn’t meet some unnecessarily strict validation criteria. During the registration process on Tesco, for example, you need to enter your phone number with no spaces or you get your form rejected with a big red error message. Come on Tesco!
It is not difficult to remove spaces from a telephone number – why blame the customer when you didn’t even tell them what you wanted in the first place!  But they are not alone. We’ve found examples of spaces in credit card numbers being rejected, a space in a postcode being rejected and even a postcode without a space being rejected.
Error Trapping

The rule here is to let customers type in what they want and then use your eCommerce system to process it into a different format if necessary.

If the customer does make an error during checkout it must firstly be made clear that an error has been detected and secondly, the location of the error on the form must be highlighted and the nature of the error indicated. Making sure that all these aspects of the error are communicated to the customer usually requires, double error messaging.

 

Double error messaging

Double error messaging puts one error message near the top of the page, indicating that something is wrong with the form and another message next to the form field containing the error. One or both of these messages should indicate the nature of the error and, if not obvious, what needs to be done to rectify it. A nice touch on the error message shown opposite is that it gives the customer another route to purchase – contacting the call centre.

Read more about eCommerce Form Design.

 

Find out more about Emarkable’s eCommerce Solutions and how to avoid the loss of of eCommerce Data Rejection.

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We are always happy to answer any questions. Contact the team by phone on (01) 808 1301, or email us at info@emarkable.ie

Richard Coen

With over 21 years of experience in Digital Marketing, 31 years in sales and 25 years in business development, Richard assists companies to develop key growth strategies on a local or international basis. He can assist marketers to achieve balance in their approach to key areas affected by the growth in digital marketing.

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