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Adam Kalsey

This is the blog of Adam Kalsey. Unusual depth and complexity. Rich, full body with a hint of nutty earthiness.

User Experience

Popcorn usability

30 Sep 2003

My kid’s ecommerce site is humming along nicely — almost $200 in orders in the first two days of business. Today when they got home from school, we sat down together and checked their orders. They also got their first lesson in usability.

The site has a shipping option for Will Call. The shipping method description said “pickup for local orders.” Someone from out of town placed an order selecting Will Call as their shipping method but didn’t live locally. When we talked to him, we found out that he assumed we lived near him and he’d be able to pick his popcorn up.

I explained the problem to my kids and they decided to change the description. They were able to determine what needed to be changed, but I had to help them with the actual solution. Since “local” was ambiguous, we changed the description to “pickup for Sacramento area orders.”

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