Wow. I couldn't imagine doing anything like that on any of our sites, even if it was more usable (modal window, link from homepage, etc.). Customers just don't need to know that sort of thing UPFRONT when browsing the site. If you want it on your customer service page, ok, I could see that. We've had issues with people not getting stuff when they thought they should or orders processing a little longer than normal, but again, that's what customer service is for.
This site feels very mom & pop or at least run by a small business and I feel a bit bad making an example of them. But there surely is academic value here.
What gets me the most is that this was done with apparent disregard for their affiliates who are sending them valuable traffic. We sent them a lot of traffic yesterday for nothing.
A little communication around out of stock issues, shipping issues, etc. would go a long way. I'm guessing we're one of their top affiliates and we didn't get any communication on this at all.
I have other halloween merchants letting me know immediately when top selling products are out of stock, because they know that I may be paying for the traffic I'm sending to them.
This is critical for a seasonal business like this where the model in many cases is to completely sell out of stock.
Haha, nice. I heard a better one the other day though. Some decided the 2nd week in December was the right time to move his domain registrar for his only eCommerce site, one that is very much in the Xmas boom market.
Shouldn't be a problem right? Indeed it wasn't. Everything went smoothly.... except one thing: Google decided to ditch him from the index. For whatever reason, I don't know, but his 1000+ pages got de-indexed faster than you can say "Transfer Out" and obviously just about all his organic traffic dried up.
This is this guys only income source and he was on target for his best ever month this month. Not any more obviously. I have no idea what possessed him to make a change like that 2 weeks before Xmas, it was utter madness.
Good example. I am also reluctant to pick on small sites. However when a huge company does similarly lame stuff I am not hesitant. This is two years old but still - Gap' href='http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2005/08/31/what-kind-of-management-does-this/">Gap'>http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2005/08/31/what-kind-of-management-does-this/">Gap closed their entire site for days.
Wow, that is pretty scary- I agree with your advice on affiliates checking up on vendors/merchants sites to make sure that nothing has gone wrong. In fact, I probably ought to check a few of the sites that I may still be promoting in various links; it's been a while since I have run through them all.
Wow. I couldn't imagine doing anything like that on any of our sites, even if it was more usable (modal window, link from homepage, etc.). Customers just don't need to know that sort of thing UPFRONT when browsing the site. If you want it on your customer service page, ok, I could see that. We've had issues with people not getting stuff when they thought they should or orders processing a little longer than normal, but again, that's what customer service is for.
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I can't believe what I'm seeing. I was prompted to check out a merchant's site by a precipitous drop in conversion rates today. I can't be certain as we send most traffic to product pages, but this might explain at least some of the problem.
Here's the homepage...
They put a customer service manifesto inside a Javascript alert box. It's so big in Firefox that it goes off the bottom of my very large screen. I can't even see the ok button to clear it. (sure, I can hit enter, but I had to think about that one.)
Usability aside, can you think of a scarier message to display? And this is the top selling week of the entire year for Halloween costumes.
I don't like to make an example of a small merchant like this, but it well illustrates the point that it is a good idea for affiliates to visit your merchants sites once in a while to see what your customers are seeing.
Or maybe this merchant has thrown in the towel for the season, in which case, an email to affiliates would be a good thing.