thread Re: Problems with checkout form field validation in Online Store

Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 10:22:41 GMT

I’m looking for a bit of help or shared experiences that might improve customers’ perception of the Square Online Store which we started using a few weeks ago. We have been puzzled by the lack of orders after customers have asked how to order online.

We asked one customer who managed it what his experience was and he said the ordering was fine but the checkout took multiple attempts due to field entries being flagged as “not valid” even when they are. We have done some research on this and the problems seem to occur on mobile devices (phones) which is what most people would use to order from our little café in the UK.

Problems encountered include:

On the “Your Details” form all that can be seen in the phone number prefix field is the word ‘United’. Although I guess this should default to United Kingdom, rather than United Arab Emirates, one customer had his phone reported as not valid when the prefix was set to United States and he got very irate.
On the “Payment Information” form this behavior is repeated. The country abbreviations should be USA, UAE or UK so that there is less ambiguity on small screens
The Postal Code field parsing is pathetic. Another user had a perfectly correct postcode which was repeatedly rejected. It turned out she had a space following the code. Detecting this was also difficult because the code could not all be displayed on the phone screen due to the large-ish font she was using. Not satisfactory and the parser should be able to strip out preceding or following blank space
A further comment was “why do I have to enter my phone number and postcode twice?”. The truth is that you don’t. At least in the UK, credit card validation only needs the postcode once, the numeric part of the address and the card holders name (along with the actual card data, of course) and yet the form asks for City, State, Country and phone number as well. All this is making users highly irritated especially when combined with the next problem.
I have a screenshot of a form correctly completed with card number, expiry date, CVV number and first postcode and yet each field is flagged as ‘not valid’. A complete fabrication. For obvious reasons I cannot post this here.

It seems to me that the form designers have not thought about how it renders on a small screen and have not studied any ergonomics. Why, oh why, for pickup orders is the whole billing address required. You don’t have to do that when ordering face to face and paying by contactless card.

The whole checkout process seems designed to annoy. Has anyone else had any similar experiences?

Thanks

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

MarinaCraftsTor — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 11:44:42 GMT

Hi we have also experienced the issues with our customers about the phone number validation. Customers are unable to complete the check out process and I am also sure that this has cost us busness,

The other big question that we seem to be getting is 'where are you based?' When I ask the customer why do you ask this? I get the response because of the language that is used on your web site asking for state and Zip code etc. Our Customers think that we are based in the US and therefore do not complete the sale.

There should be an option to default this to a county of your choice eg UK so that customers understand what country you are based in.

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 13:37:29 GMT

@MarinaCraftsTor - yes, I had a giggle at the choice of "States" if you select the country as United Kingdom. Instead of listing counties you get England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Try telling the Scots that they are a State, not a Country!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 16:29:40 GMT

Hi @petersmith, thank you for flagging this!

At the moment, Square Online Checkout does default to the US rather than the UK so the customers may be ask for ZIP code rather than postal code. It is something that our team are actively working on based on feedback from customer, so do keep an eye our for updates from us.

From what you described, it sounds like there are a few other issues the customers are experiencing. Please give us a call or email in so our team can take a further look into this!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 06:14:49 GMT

The issues keep appearing: As a small cafe we have some items that cost less than GBP1: a slice of toast is 0.50. I hope no one would just order a slice of toast and nothing else, but they can. The checkout process goes thru until the very end and then says the card is declined. There is a lower limit on card transactions of GBP1 but the checkout algorithm doesn't impose this. The poor customer would not have an idea why his card was declined. The system needs to impose the lower limit on cart value right at the first Checkout button

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 20:05:46 GMT

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, @petersmith! I can definitely see how making the minimum transaction amount clearer can help customers have a better checkout experience. Your feedback is always helpful when planning for future releases, so I'll be sure take note and pass your suggestion to our team.

Let me know if there is anything else I can do!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

craftycatsclub — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 16:44:13 GMT

I have at the moment made the mobile number as an option - hopefully that will help but the postcode/zip code is definitely an issue for check out in the UK - or atleast make it obvious there is a space after it has been entered

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 07:33:15 GMT

The case I raised has been closed so I can't update it but a month has ticked by and here in the UK we are permitted to open our café from July 4^th. The government is encouraging us to use ‘at table’ apps for customers to order and pay for food in order to minimize staff/customer contact.

We desperately need the online store checkout process to be slick in order to achieve this. At present, the boss is forbidding its use in house because paying is so time-consuming. We just need the minimum data collected to validate the card. @tranguyen can you get me any update how we can make the checkout usable?

Thanks

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 08:48:31 GMT

Hi @petersmith, thank you for reaching back out!

I was able to locate the ticket that was filed and check on the issue that was raised. At the moment, our engineering team has been able to resolved the issue around error caused by phone number and make the UK the default option on the checkout page.

The team are working on resolving the issue with postal code/addresses not being pick up for delivery orders. It's a bit more complicated than we first thought and required a lot of work to update the system, but we're testing the fix right now and are hoping that a solution will be place.

Our Partnership team are also working to develop integration with existing app-based ordering systems so we'll be sure to share more updates around that as well.

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 09:30:52 GMT

Thanks for the reply @tranguyen . If it's as complex as you mention, it doesn't look like we'll get a slick solution anytime soon. It's a pity because the Weebly store part is so good; it's just checkout that's too complex.

Now, here's an interesting idea: a third mode to go along with pickup and delivery called table mode whereby a customer can order on the Online Store but PAY using the Square card reader (card present). For this to work, the checkout would offer this as an option and then create a Ticket rather than an Order on the Square Point of Sale/Square for Restaurants with table number for identification entered by the customer. Again, probably not a quick solution and I hope we have a vaccine sooner than that!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 10:38:21 GMT

I really hope that I can share a better update soon @petersmith, and I will be sure to pass your suggestion to the team as well so maybe we can have something in place temporarily while the issue is being worked on.

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

craftycatsclub — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:42:11 GMT

Again, I would also like a push on the check out form being amended, even if temporarily having text to say something about making sure there is no space left at the end of entering your postcode OR when it flags up something is invalid to mention the post code issues there? I've had so many people message me saying they have tried to buy something but it keeps saying its invalid

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 08:33:10 GMT

Hi @craftycatsclub, thank you for flagging this! I've passed this to our Product team as a suggestion for a temporary workaround while they are working on resolving the underlying issue.

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:25:44 GMT

Hi @petersmith @craftycatsclub, hope you are keeping well! I just want to reach out and let you know our engineering team has deployed a fix for the address validation issue last week.

Customers who need to place delivery orders should now be able to search using their postal code.

Please let me know if this has helped at all!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:40:23 GMT

Thanks for the progress @tranguyen. But it doesn't really help with my problem of someone wanting to order ahead a cup of coffee for pickup. It is sooo complex:

If the customer has not saved their data or are first time users:

Email address: Once

First name: Twice

Last name: Twice

Phone number: Twice

Card number: Once

Expiration Once

CVV: Once

Postal/zip code: Twice

Address Line 1: Once

Address Line 2: Once (actually optional but not indicated thus)

City: Once (actually optional but not indicated thus)

State: Once (actually optional but not indicated thus)

Country: Once

That’s 17 fields for one cup of coffee instead of a tap of their card or phone face to face. No wonder people are getting exasperated

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 16:24:27 GMT

This should have been updated recently as well, @petersmith! When customers go to checkout, the payment information box should now be consolidate into one single line like in the screenshot below.

I hope this will make it easier for customers to order!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 17:03:16 GMT

Yes, @tranguyen, it's much better on desktop machines. But on mobile devices especially in portrait mode, it's very difficult to use

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

petersmith — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 06:49:38 GMT

Hello @tranguyen . I don't think I thanked you properly. Yes, the checkout is much better. For pickup, the customer's address is not required and the whole thing is streamlined. I've only found two little problems:

* As I pointed out, the card details are really cramped on mobile devices with limited pixels. These days most people will order from their phones rather than sit at a desktop so the web pages need to reflect that.

* Refreshing the 'Your Details' page makes the phone number prefix revert back to United States but again, all you can see on a mobile device is 'United' so customers would naturally think that United Kingdom had persisted.

Overall, a great improvement. Many thanks to the team

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

tranguyen — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 08:23:27 GMT

Thanks for flagging those @petersmith! The Square Online Store is developed on an ongoing basis so we really appreciate your feedback as it'll help us to improve the product and system.

I've made notes and passed your observations on to the team, so we can get these two things changed as well to make the experience more seamless on mobile.

If you have any other suggestions or come across anything else, please do let me know!

Re: Problems with checkout form field validation

Gary55 — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 10:27:27 GMT

Hi @tranguyen

I would like to keep abreast of this as I have had similar issues. Most annoyingly is that about half of my orders do come through but with customers using a +1 US country code for their phone number. So I assume they are not receiving their SMS messages.

With regards to calling support, I have pretty much given up on this. They are very polite and do try to help but every call ends with them saying they will email me after looking into it further and then never hearing back from anyone. I have had the same experience trying email support. I receive the automated email saying someone will get back to me and then never hearing again. My inbox is just one massive thread of my emails followed by an automated response.