Look how old this is!
I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 16 years 11 months 24 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.

Last night I was a customer of fandango.com for the first and last time. My kids were out of school at noon the day that Spiderman three opened, so how could I deny their pleas?

If you are running a business,  can your server handle the capacity? if you’re a publisher, would simple a mention of your website on Digg.com or a well placed press release bring your server to its knees? You would think that a business like fandango.comcould come close, but what a disaster it was.

Their website was okay, but it was pretty initially.  Because I was determined to make a purchase though, I was able to find what I wanted.
Finding tickets at a theater near me was my purpose, but I had to scroll to find the showtimes. Reading or adding fan reviews was given much more prominence than any “buy tickets now” call to action. So while I wasn’t impressed with their usability, the real problems started I tried to check out.

Apparently, nobody told fandango.com that there may be a bit of pre-interest in this movie. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that upon addition of my credit card information it took over five minutes each time,  merely just to time out and give a Windows Explorer error.  Nearly a full half hour was wasted with failed attempts.

Obviously, the servers were busy, but I phoned 800 Fandango anyway because by this time I wanted to be sure that my credit card was not being charged each time.

After talking with the support person, she confirmed that my card had not been charged and that the servers are so busy it would be better to just purchased by phone. “Great” I said, “can you help me”? at that point, she explained that they had an automated phone system, and she would connect.

The phone system did mediocre job recognizing my voice commands, although read the theaters and times at an excruciatingly slow rate. By now I’m into this time-saving feature nearly 45 minutes, so I continued through the program trying to purchase my selection.

Once I ultimately was able to get the system to understand that I wanted the 1:10 p.m. showing at a Portland division Street theater, I got the equivalent of a verbal hourglass for nearly 5 more minutes. At that point, the computer woman’s voice came back and told me that she was unable to access the system at this time please try again later, and went silent.

Naturally, the logical thing was just to try the website again right? By now, my wife is involved my kids are involved, and I have too much time invested to quit, so my wife decided to give it a try.

After she failed twice, I suggested that perhaps her best bet was to create an account first, then to add some memorized credit card information, and then to reattempt the purchase. In my mind, this would accomplish three separate tasks individually, and we may have a better shot at completing our transaction.

While I cooked dinner, she got the account created and even credit card account entry completed, I believe, but was still not able to complete the purchase transaction, so we had dinner.

Over the course of the evening, my wife tried 13 or 14 separate times on the laptop while sewing and watching TV, and ultimately, it actually worked, and we got our confirmation number,  so we are going, but that’s not the point. Your site visitors shouldn’t have to work to get what they want for any reason.
When is the last time you’ve gone to your website and looked at it from a visitor’s point of view? Have you completed your checkout or bid/quote process and looked with a critical eye at each step along the way? Are there messages or text that could be personalized to improve the process for your Web shoppers?

What actions or path do you intend for visitors to take when they reach your website? Go to your own website, and take that path, while awaiting it all the way through to the end, including your “thank you” page, and even any error pages. Is this what you want your customers to see?

Yipee,  in Spiderman 3 in two hours!

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