I recently bought a $5 t-shirt from an online store, add another $5 for shipping and all together I spent $10 for an item that I liked but did not need. Yesterday I bought some coffee, which has become a favorite in our house, also from an online store.

On the other hand, I was going to donate $10 to The One Campaign which attempts to fight the emergency of global AIDS and extreme poverty around the world. The $10 donation was actually a purchase of a 10-pack of their white bands, which I thought I could share with other friends and raise the awareness of the campaign. Unlike the situations above, to this day I have still yet to but those bands and make my donation.

What was the difference from a t-shirt which I did not need to donating money to a very good cause? The checkout process for their online stores. In the case of the t-shirt and coffee retailers, I found what I wanted to buy very quickly and it was very easy to identify what I wanted to buy. The same can be said to the ONE Campaign store but the checkout process where completely different. I was able to buy my shirt in a matter of seconds, or as fast as it would take me to enter my address and credit card information. Just as fast I had received my confirmation email and I returned back to my activities.

What lead me away from donating to the ONE campaign was the fact they required that I created an account with their site before I could start the payment process. Since I was working on something else, I quickly returned back those activities and thought I could come back later. A few days have gone by and I am still have not gone back to spend my $10. If I want to give you my money, please make it easy to do so. I just wanted to enter my address and card information and know that a few days later my purchase would arrive. I probably would’ve also had checked off the little box asking me if I wanted to receive more information from them.

Although I have not been part of an eCommerce project in the resent past this is certainly a lesson learned for future projects. Lately, I’ve become more aware of the importance of making things easy for the user in any application. Now, I need to find another $5 shirt ;o)