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I love your products, but your online store experience feels like it was made in 2005 and is full of poor user experience design issues. The only word to describe it is 'atrocious'.
Yesterday I had issues with my credit card being accepted on your site. So I asked a friend to buy it for me. He is a professional digital user experience designer. He said that the purchase and checkout experience is the worst he's seen in 10 years. He said this with no prior contact or bias one way or the other. And it's his area of professional expertise.
My worry is that this will lose you customers and sales. I'm certain it is in fact.
It's understandable that you have issues given your customisation to enable subscription purchases, there's no easy 'out of the box' solution you can plug in. But I urge you to escalate the need for an all-new UX (and middleware, WebObjects is antique) to drag your ecommerce experience into this decade before we reach the next decade. It will improve your online sales figures, and not leave a nasty unprofessional aftertaste when buying online.
Love PF2 by the way :)
They're currently looking into revamping the store/checkout process.
I am a Starfinder DieHard and I LOATHE this website and online store. There is really no excuse for having a system where you post in a forum to cancel a subscription. Changing your credit card is akin to reading egyptian hieroglyphics. Paizo, guys, what the hell?
I've never had a problem updating my credit card, which I've had to do a few times because when you work in construction your credit card never lives to see it's expiration date.
I also spend a fair amount of time posting here so posting a query for customer service is no problem for me.
I'm also a huge fan of Starfinder.
I've never had a problem updating my credit card, which I've had to do a few times because when you work in construction your credit card never lives to see it's expiration date.
I also spend a fair amount of time posting here so posting a query for customer service is no problem for me.
I'm also a huge fan of Starfinder.
Kay?
There is really no excuse for having a system where you post in a forum to cancel a subscription.
It’s always seemed to me that subscription is something of a misnomer anyway (since there’s no obligation). Is that kind of “opt-out at any time of a paying subscription” common elsewhere?
I’ve always assumed that part of the reason for this was tied up with that reality. As such, the new qualification for Paizo advantage may have removed at least one barrier to giving customers direct control over subscription numbers.
There is really no excuse for having a system where you post in a forum to cancel a subscription.It’s always seemed to me that subscription is something of a misnomer anyway (since there’s no obligation). Is that kind of “opt-out at any time of a paying subscription” common elsewhere?
I’ve always assumed that part of the reason for this was tied up with that reality. As such, the new qualification for Paizo advantage may have removed at least one barrier to giving customers direct control over subscription numbers.
I wonder about that too.
I am a Starfinder DieHard and I LOATHE this website and online store. There is really no excuse for having a system where you post in a forum to cancel a subscription. Changing your credit card is akin to reading egyptian hieroglyphics. Paizo, guys, what the hell?
You can also cancel by e-mail, if you don't want to share your feedback with everybody. I have done that.
I have never canceled a subscription by phone, but I guess that is possible too -- but e-mail is private enough for that purpose.
I’d dearly love more customer control (both with regard to subscriptions, but also with moving around pending orders and accessing historical information). My order history is bloated and looking back more than a few months is pretty much fruitless.
I’ve never found a way to make that “ship as soon as possible” button actually work, either.
I’d dearly love more customer control (both with regard to subscriptions, but also with moving around pending orders and accessing historical information). My order history is bloated and looking back more than a few months is pretty much fruitless.
I’ve never found a way to make that “ship as soon as possible” button actually work, either.
Me neither, but I thought it was because my sidecart almost always contains orders for several months out.
I hate that sidecart thing actually.
But look, I'm aware that there's alternative ways to cancel orders and subscriptions than the forum but all of them equate to "Not pushing one button like almost every other eStore."
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I hate that sidecart thing actually.
But look, I'm aware that there's alternative ways to cancel orders and subscriptions than the forum but all of them equate to "Not pushing one button like almost every other eStore."
Magazine subscriptions are inherently similar. Magazines don't just have a button to push to cancel a subscription, you actually have to write in or call in. Same with several subscription based companies, like JustFab for shoes. You can skip a month, but to actually cancel your subscription, you have to call.
Magazine subscriptions are inherently similar. Magazines don't just have a button to push to cancel a subscription, you actually have to write in or call in. Same with several subscription based companies, like JustFab for shoes. You can skip a month, but to actually cancel your subscription, you have to call.I hate that sidecart thing actually.
But look, I'm aware that there's alternative ways to cancel orders and subscriptions than the forum but all of them equate to "Not pushing one button like almost every other eStore."
*blink* People still subscribe to magazines? Like...paper magazines?
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There is really no excuse for having a system where you post in a forum to cancel a subscription
That is not required. You can call C/S direct or send an email. The ability to communicate with C/S through the message boards is actually something that grew out of our customer requests. They simply gave us what we asked for. Personally, I never would have done it since it creates more work having to monitor three different avenues of communication (four if you include snail mail), but they are trying to make their customers happy. Its not really fair to criticize them for that.
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*blink* People still subscribe to magazines? Like...paper magazines?Magazine subscriptions are inherently similar. Magazines don't just have a button to push to cancel a subscription, you actually have to write in or call in. Same with several subscription based companies, like JustFab for shoes. You can skip a month, but to actually cancel your subscription, you have to call.I hate that sidecart thing actually.
But look, I'm aware that there's alternative ways to cancel orders and subscriptions than the forum but all of them equate to "Not pushing one button like almost every other eStore."
Almost all of my reading is from paper. I opt out of PDF copies, when given the option.
Yeah, I had a lot of issues with it, too. I still bought all the books I wanted and am planning on buying more...but if I didn't already know that Pathfinder was good, I would have given up somewhere throughout the process.
Granted, I'm an idiot who uses what features are available poorly, but a degree of fool-proofing for idiots like me is also necessary. A degree of modernity is necessary, also. At least let me order/cancel/subscribe/whatever like most places.
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*blink* People still subscribe to magazines? Like...paper magazines?Magazine subscriptions are inherently similar. Magazines don't just have a button to push to cancel a subscription, you actually have to write in or call in. Same with several subscription based companies, like JustFab for shoes. You can skip a month, but to actually cancel your subscription, you have to call.I hate that sidecart thing actually.
But look, I'm aware that there's alternative ways to cancel orders and subscriptions than the forum but all of them equate to "Not pushing one button like almost every other eStore."
First, yes (I love it when my copies of Cook's Illustrated arrive! One day I'm gonna wallpaper a room with its back covers); and Second, the Pathfinder Adventure Path is more or less a really nicely bound magazine. It's a numbered issue of a serial product that comes out on a regular, periodic basis (hence, periodical), and many people receive it by subscription (but some do buy them from specialized bookstores). Moreover, it was birthed into existence as a direct replacement of Dungeon magazine and Dragon magazine, when WotC revoked those licenses from Paizo, so that existing, long term subscribers to those magazines would continue to receive a similar product. It just is a periodical without many ads save for products by the same company (much like Cook's Illustrated, come to think of it).
And huh, it occurs to me that cancelling a subscription from Paizo is way, way, waaaaaaay easier than cancelling something from America's Test Kitchen, let me tell you.
That said, I do agree the store could be better designed, though apart from the occasional issue (that's always been resolved) I've not found it too bad. I've struggled as much with Amazon as I have with Paizo's store, and with far worse customer service.
For those who do struggle with the store... it's unfortunate, but the books can also be ordered through other sites, including Amazon, or purchased from game stores and Barnes and Noble and the like. Yes, it's better for Paizo when people order direct from them, but in the meantime there's other ways to get the books if for some reason using this site makes one frustrated. It's not like they're inaccessible if you don't order them from here.
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First, yes (I love it when my copies of Cook's Illustrated arrive! One day I'm gonna wallpaper a room with its back covers);
I always thought of cutting them out and framing a bunch of them! They're really gorgeous.
Chief Technical Officer
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I just posted an explanation of why there's no one-click method to cancel a subscription here.
There is really no excuse for having a system where you post in a forum to cancel a subscription.It’s always seemed to me that subscription is something of a misnomer anyway (since there’s no obligation). Is that kind of “opt-out at any time of a paying subscription” common elsewhere?
I’ve always assumed that part of the reason for this was tied up with that reality. As such, the new qualification for Paizo advantage may have removed at least one barrier to giving customers direct control over subscription numbers.
Actually, quite a few. Off the top of my head, Blue Apron is a paying "subscription" that makes you send an email to opt-out (and they stop you to ask you why you're doing it.)
I'd actually say that one-click unsubscribe is actually the exception and not the norm in the industry (not the rpg gaming industry, but more the website subscription industry). I don't think this will change as the barrier will make people think twice before unsubscribing (and subscribing, but I imagine that Paizo wants people who are more committed than that for subscribers).
I just posted an explanation of why there's no one-click method to cancel a subscription:
"be without customer service intervention, I'm confident that a lot of people would "subscribe" for individual releases, get the free PDF or discount for that one product, then unsubscribe. Essentially, they'd take advantage of the system to gain subscriber benefits for individual products without making the commitment that is, for us, a pretty important part of the deal. Allowing that would actively damage our ability to use subscription numbers as a useful predictor of sales."
It makes sense, although those cases could be accommodated via the right design and business rules. For example: customers only get to download the 'free pdf or discount' if they subscribe for a minimum of 6 months. Etc. Smart people in other similar situations have already solved this stuff. Copy their solutions.
The issue you have is that your site is painfully slow, frequently bugs out, and the user experience design of the purchase and checkout process is very poor by today's standards. Pathfinder and Starfinder's quality is being let down badly by this part of your customer experience: the part when they are getting out their credit cards. Right before you get paid, or likely in too many cases don't get paid :(
This is a very serious issue because your site is being compared to regular 2019 consumer sites and also dndbeyond, and it comes off looking very substandard by comparison. The Paizo site experience right now just confirms to 5e players who are sitting on the fence that 5e is better. People commonly equate site experience with product quality. Irrational sure, but normal human psychology. "The site sucks, so the game probably sucks"..
The effect of this is it destroys confidence in your product: right at the wrong moment. Bad check out experiences frequently result in abandoned shopping carts - I'm curious how many times you see people fill their basket on your site but not check out?
2e is a great opportunity to dramatically grow market share and Paizo. But it's not going to do this as well as it can if the first experience for potential players seeking out PF 2e information is a slow, inconsistent, and confusing user experience on your website, and a checkout experience so retro you worry for the safety of your credit card details.
I understand there's a decade of custom code in the WebObjects system you use to run your subscriptions and other paizo-specific things. But that software is truly antique, and it's not going to get any better. As painful as it is, you really need an all-new website backend based on the best of modern software - which will in turn let you create a new customer experience that lives up to the quality of the rest of Pathfinder and Starfinder.
A random suggestion: have you considered contacting Fandom and asking them to build Pathfinder Beyond for you? They're independent of Wizards, and it'll be quick for them to create it given they have so much of the system in place for 5e.
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For example: customers only get to download the 'free pdf or discount' if they subscribe for a minimum of 6 months.That would outright kill their subscription income.
and the user experience design of the purchase and checkout process is very poor by today's standards.It's about the same as any other site I've seen, the only one more streamlined is sending money on Paypal.
The Paizo site experience right now just confirms to 5e players who are sitting on the fence that 5e is better. People commonly equate site experience with product quality. Irrational sure, but normal human psychology.
Very irrational. There's not much to be done if someone chooses a game not based on the game but preference in the website they saw it on.
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The issue you have is that your site is painfully slow, frequently bugs out, and the user experience design of the purchase and checkout process is very poor by today's standards. Pathfinder and Starfinder's quality is being let down badly by this part of your customer experience: the part when they are getting out their credit cards. Right before you get paid, or likely in too many cases don't get paid :(
I would wager that most Pathfinder/Starfinder players never even visit Paizo's website, but that's just a guess. Whence do you get your data that you're so confident in telling Paizo how to run their business?
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Yossarian makes a lot of assumptions. Chief among them seems to be that he knows best how to run this website.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, a young US paratrooper was walking around the city and came across the Dôme des Invalides, a former church. "What's this?" he asked a nearby gendarme. "This is the tomb of Napoleon!" "Oh? Who was he?" "M'sieur does not know? He was the greatest soldier who ever lived!" The paratrooper thought about this for a minute, then asked "So? Where were his jumps?"
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This is a very serious issue because your site is being compared to regular 2019 consumer sites and also dndbeyond, and it comes off looking very substandard by comparison. The Paizo site experience right now just confirms to 5e players who are sitting on the fence that 5e is better. People commonly equate site experience with product quality. Irrational sure, but normal human psychology. "The site sucks, so the game probably sucks"
Because the web site doesn't have the latest bells and whistles the game "sucks?"
That sounds more like an excuse not to play rather than some sort of logical comparison of game systems. Perhaps those people aren't interested in Pathfinder in the first place.
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I would make out with this website if I could, and I would not mind if the online store watched.
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Following a theme from further upthread, some food for thought: it's probably worth keeping in mind that perceived usability increases with exposure. As a result, frequent users of a website are not good judges of how usable that website is. It's a situation where your personal experience can be incredibly misleading. I know I've personally gotten used to a number of its quirks, even though adjusting to those quirks was a long and especially painful process.
This is especially true when a tool has a number of options for expert users built in which are of lower or no value to new users. Those features can be especially valuable but don't have much bearing on the usability of the tool for most people.
While not all of Yossarian's criticisms will be true for every user, they're largely talking about well-accepted best practices. It's worth noting that people do absolutely conflate their perceptions of websites with the products those websites sell and those perceptions strongly influence purchasing decisions. It may not make sense to you, but reality is freakin' weird, and if you think hard enough, I guarantee that you could remember some times when you didn't buy something because a store or a website looked sketchy or seemed broken.
(It does make more sense the more you know about signalling theory, too.)
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"Inflamed hyperbole" is a little bit of inflamed hyperbole, yes? :) As power users, we're not always good at recognizing problems. This can lead to completely valid, legitimate issues seeming silly or contrived when an experienced user sees someone else fighting with a system. And usability issues tend to hit people personally, so the feedback you get can be more... visceral, we'll say. That doesn't make the feedback itself invalid, however. A lot of the issues Yossarian pointed out are things I would likely identify as issues in an heuristic evaluation were I to sit down and do one.
And apologies if I was being misleading, myself--I wasn't saying that Paizo is not open to feedback. They've been very accepting of it, in my experience. But Paizo can only react to feedback they hear. If we tell visitors that the bad user experience they just had wasn't actually a bad experience, that's not especially great.
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And apologies if I was being misleading, myself--I wasn't saying that Paizo is not open to feedback. They've been very accepting of it, in my experience. But Paizo can only react to feedback they hear. If we tell visitors that the bad user experience they just had wasn't actually a bad experience, that's not especially great.
I think this paragraph and the last line especially is what's been bothering me about some of the responses in this thread. While I've certainly seen plenty of drive-by posts from people that were decidedly unhelpful ('Your website sucks arglbargl') it seems that even the ones that make half of an effort to offer constructive criticism or suggestions tend to get met with a degree of dismissiveness ('I navigate things just fine, I don't see what the problem is') or even an air of being offended ('Who are you to tell Paizo their business?') from long-term users. While I understand that it surely gets tiring for the tech team and for others to see the same sorts of complaints pop up, I don't think the above attitude is helpful if someone actually seems to be posting their feedback or constructive criticism in good faith.
I agree. I think terminalmancer’s point that tech problems can make us grumpy is worth bearing in mind too. It doesn’t excuse rudeness, but it may well explain it.
I’ll often voice an opinion if I see a fellow poster being rude or offensive. I’m generally more reticent about that in CS or Tech issue threads - not because it doesn’t need saying, but because I think Paizo staff are better placed to judge the appropriateness of tone there. Especially in the case of a new user, how their complaint is received is going to affect their impression of Paizo (and they may well not distinguish between community response and staff response).
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"Inflamed hyperbole" is a little bit of inflamed hyperbole, yes? :)
Being “horrified” at using an average web store is hyperbole.
Also “my web designer friends say its the worse they’ve seen in years” leans into it too.
and for others to see the same sorts of complaints pop up,
To the point of overlap, we actually have two threads going on right now and I didn’t realize they were two separate threads. The hyperbole and mention of web designer friends constantly reads less like criticism and more a complaining want that the site should be designed how they want, not what would actually be good. Like the above suggestion to remove free subscriber PDFs.
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Okay. Which thread am I supposed to be making out with?
Sales metrics show that the more clicks it takes to complete a sale the more sales you lose. The longer it takes for a page to load the more sales you lose. The more confusing the UI the more sales you lose.
You should scrutinize those metrics. They are going to be more relevant as the number of options increases - and less relevant as the number of options approaches one.
While I can't say it with 100% confidence, I'm pretty sure that Paizo.com is the only place to buy the PDFs. For people who prefer the PDFs, the buggy site may not be enough of a barrier to lose sales. For the people trying to buy the physical books, the buggy site is definitely going to cause frustrated people to open up Amazon in a new tab - or call a FLGS to see if they have a copy.
The website is old but it's not like blinking text, underconstruction.gif old. The effort they put into revamping it should be proportional to the amount of business they think they're actually losing.
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My favorite bit was where Freehold DM made out with the thread and the online store was looking the other way.
My next favorite bit was blazestudios23 “about 8 years out of date”. Seems pretty specific to be about, unless the current website appears to replicate some disturbing UI trend we left behind in 2012.
I agree with Terminalmancer’s points. There is a little air of sacred cows being minced, and that’s what sacred cows are for.
Having said all that, I loved the “old” site, with the random current threads being posted in selection on the right hand side, and the...words and...things. The current site looks like a store, an’ a blog...an where even is my lawn? Nevermind. I’ll probly fergit what the old...what was it again? Hmmph. I lakht it the ol’ way. But, ah giss, ah better git used tew the noo way. An’ maybe, just mebbe, buy sumthin’.
Still miss the old site tho’. Sadly, times change. It’s a dog’s life. Pity I’m a human.