Timeline for Should an e-commerce application reserve products before attempting payment?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 9, 2020 at 14:34 | comment | added | paj28 | By the way, this answer says most businesses don't reserve during checkout and accept the risk of occasional poor user interactions. | |
| Jul 9, 2020 at 9:25 | comment | added | paj28 | The other answer pointed out that this undesirable user experience can happen even with reservation because stock levels can be wrong, or even things like stock being water damaged in storage, and he thinks whether to reserve is a business decision, rather than "always on" as you suggest. Perhaps this would make you reconsider parts of your answer? Or if not, an explanation to the other answer why you disagree would stimulate an interesting discussion. | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 23:22 | comment | added | paj28 | Good idea about keeping the shopping cart. Could even notify user when stock available again. Any concerns about denial-of-service attacks? A malicious competitor could create a bunch of accounts, and with each one begin the checkout process - reserving all stock of the product and preventing new orders. | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 23:04 | comment | added | gnasher729 | A timeout of 10 minutes for the payment process is quite reasonable. But what to do with the shopping cart? Best is to leave it intact for a long time, because it is normal that the item will still be available say in a month, and check the items before the user tries again to check out. Emptying the shopping cart will mean lost sales. | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 22:49 | comment | added | paj28 | @gnasher729 - Totally agree from customer PoV. Ok, so this functionality is standard. Any idea what a typical timeout is when the user doesn't complete the payment process? I'd guess 10 minutes or so? | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 22:34 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @paj28: As a customer, I would be absolutely pissed off if you can't deliver after I entered my payment details, and I would think that I have been scammed. You would have lost a customer forever. If some e-commerce software doesn't implement this, you shouldn't ever consider using it. | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 22:27 | comment | added | paj28 | Sure, makes sense. Just to be clear: is this something that most e-commerce software (Magento, etc.) implements? | |
| Jul 8, 2020 at 22:08 | history | answered | 1201ProgramAlarm | CC BY-SA 4.0 |