Re: Shopping Cart Schema - Sessions

Paul K Egell-Johnsen wrote: > JB wrote: > > > > I also forgot to mention. I am leaning towards using GET to send the session > > ids. Many people have told me that customer penatration decreases, some > > Which people? What facts do they have to support their claims? Is this a > bigger problem than distrust in credit card security? Is it a bigger > problem than poorly designed shops where people never finalizes their > deals? > Good question - I worked at a shop some time ago with some of the largest ecommerce names (at that time anyway), and they didn't have a problem using cookies. *Perhaps* they would have had more shoppers, but I don't think so. I think a lot of the people who rant about cookies/privacy aren't the types who purchase much online anyway, or want to compile their own SSL extensions into lynx before "shopping" (slight exaggeration). :) > > > times significantly, when requiring cookies to use the cart. How would this > > have an effect on my script? i will have to call the sessid in all of my > > links, correct? > > That is done automatically by PHP 4.x when using the correct settings, > but I can't remember them. There might even be a method for asserting if > a user digs cookies or not, and thus based on that set the correct run > time status. > It's not done very usefully if you rely on forms at all - at least POST forms. You'll need to stick a hidden variable in every form - perhaps people have form classes that do this automatically, but I think it's still much easier to just use cookies for this. > > What I really wanted to pounce on was the customer penetration > mentioned. Does anyone have numbers/research on the following: > > How many don't like to use credit cards on line? > How many turn off cookies? > How many fear cookies? > You touch on it below, but rephrase that last one "how many people who would otherwise buy from you 'fear' cookies"? > > I feel that for the majority of people cookies are not an issue, > probably due to lack of knowledge, or an attitude that it serves a > purpose. If your shop is aimed towards fringe groups (like geeks) that > sceptic group might be large. If your shop aims at the general > population I'm pretty sure that most leave their cookies on because it > makes their webmail easier to use, their accounts at amazon easier to > use, etc. > > When in doubt, follow the stream... Check out this, Amazon uses cookies, > Amazon does a lot of business. Do you really feel that Amazon misses out > on a lot of customers? Do you know of any large websites doing shopping > carts which doesn't rely on cookies? > Only ones I see put the session ID in the URL string, but many use things like broadvision to handle this, which has its own problems... > > Finally the biggest obstacle might be credit card usage (lots of > negative hype) or product cost, who wants to use cc for really cheap > stuff? > > Even more finally, sorry that I can't shore up my thoughts with any good > facts either, I just felt like questioning the statement since I feel > that it isn't neccessary the full truth. >