Website usibility problem...Please help

[goinggolf]

We have a retail website at http://www.bodykind.com and while most people have no problems using the site we get the odd occassion where certain users have problems.

It all concerns adding products to their basket and the basket not holding either more than one product or not holding products through to checkout.

We've tried in vain to replicate the scenario on numerous platforms and browser types but without any success, yet we know it is happeneing very occasionally.

Initially we thought it was a cookie settings related problem and advised users to set their privacy/security options to default but this doesn't seem to remedy the case in every situation.

The site is built on ASP/SQL.

Could anyone maybe replicate this problem and suggest what the problem is?

Many thanks

[speed]

I don't know if this is anyway part of your problem, but I have noticed that your buyProduct and updateBasket forms start in one table cell and end outside the cell/table.

The start of the buyProduct form is also in a malformed table.

It's a bit of a long shot, but I'm wondering if this invalid mark up is confusing some browsers, which are then posting the wrong information on add to/update basket. Might be worth investigating!

Hope that's some help!

[sslcheap]

Are you sure you are using session cookies and not "persistent" cookies? When I tried it my shopping cart was cleared out whenever I went to a new page. It appears that the shopping cart items are stored using persistent cookies and not session cookies.

[goinggolf]

Many thanks for the replies and advice guys, in reply to the session/persistent cookie post, we actually do use persistent cookies but it just stores the users cartID, all contents of the cart are stored in the dB so if they return before the cookie expires we will remember their basket and contents.

[sslcheap]

Many thanks for the replies and advice guys, in reply to the session/persistent cookie post, we actually do use persistent cookies but it just stores the users cartID...

Ok, I see. My browser settings are set to always reject cookies except for session cookies. You'll need to add some code that checks if the cookie was set, and if not give the user a message to turn on cookies. I didn't get any message, it just cleared out the shopping cart on the next page I went to after adding something.

One problem you will have is that more and more users are running anti-spyware software that blocks cookies. Some users either won't change these settings or won't know how. Is it possible for you to just use session cookies? I think you would have fewer problems if you did that.

[goinggolf]

Again many thanks for your reply ssslcheap, we will certainly take your advice and look into using only session cookies, you've highlighted some problems that could increase over time and affect our business badly.

I'll let you know how we get on.

[swstyles]

Sounds like session issue. My next question was whether you were running your site on win2k server or win 2k3 server. I have had tons of issues on win2k3 server and sessions. Win2k3 server drops sessions without warning, it is truly a royal pain. I hope you are able to solve your problem.

[ppayne]

We also have about 0.5% (I hope not more than that) problems with our own page, http://www.jlist.com, and it's frustrating becuase we cannot find the cause. One possible cause we're checking is privacy settings. If users are using Windows 2000 or XP and have privacy settings set above "medium" then cookies can be refused, thus making items added to the cart not "stick". So check these settings.

[dannyg]

Hi,

What a great site and excellent products. Being in the health marketing industry myself, I realise the importance of having a referral program to increase sales. Satisfied customers are a great source of future sales.

Do you have an affiliate program? I'm tempted to purchase a couple of products myself and tell my friends about your site. Great effort!