Checkout - Step X of X

[civ]

On one of our classified sites we're noticing people who are not fully completing their listing, then contacting us to figure out why they are not displaying. When we check to see what went wrong we see that they signed up successfully, started an ad, even uploaded photos, but then they abandoned the process before paying. These aren't just cheapskates either, because they are willing to pay once they realize what went wrong - they just didn't understand that they had not fully completed the process.

And now looking back at our listing history, we see multitudes of ads that are abandoned immediately before payment - some of these may be users with no Paypal account (which is why we're hoping for a Linkpoint API module soon [shameless plug] ), but since they took the time to complete their descriptions and upload several photos it makes me wonder if they thought they were done at some point and just didn't bother emailing us to find out what went wrong.

Perhaps in the next version it would be beneficial to have a "Step X of X" displayed at every level of the checkout process so that users know where they are and how much further they must proceed to complete their purchase. Most every ecommerce shopping cart sports this functionality and now I know why.

[Eric Barnes]

Yea I know someone else mentioned a stepped process and for the next release I am going to try and have the steps like you have listed and also include a way for the user to go back and make changes before the ad is finished.