Wells Fargo e-store shopping cart review

[mike808@users.sourceforge.net]

Warning: If online e-tailer horror stories upset you, skip this message.

Executive Summary: 
Outsourcing your shopping cart and online payment system to Wells Fargo
and not verifying cross-browser functionality may be a strategic and 
costly e-tailing mistake.


What Can Go Wrong When You Outsource Your Shopping Cart:

It didn't start out well for this etailer. While shopping for some specialty
goods (repair parts for custom window blinds), I recently had the displeasure 
of being reminded on every page of their store that they use the Wells Fargo 
online payment system. I thought the point of an online store was supposed 
to be selling *your stuff*, not advertising for your bank and their payment 
system.

But that's just the start of Wells Fargo's stellar failure in delivering
the goods for this online e-tailer: The Microsoft IIS webserver that 
Wells Fargo is using is broken in a major e-commerce functional way. To say
it has a usability problem is being generous. When it's broken at the Wells
Fargo data center, apparently, there's nobody is minding the store. They're 
running your cash register, and don't have anyone making sure its even 
plugged in and working. If they were tending the servers, it probably 
wouldn't bother me that much that they've made such a poor choice on an 
unreliable webapp platform (i.e. IIS+ASP).

I consistently got the following error page and could not checkout:

> The page cannot be displayed. There is a problem with the page you are 
> trying to reach and it cannot be displayed.
> Please try the following:
>     * Click the Refresh button, or try again later; it does not normally 
>       take a long time for an application to restart.

(which doesn't fix the problem)

>     * Open the cart.wellsfargoestore.com home page, and then look for 
>       links to the information you want.

(which gives a directory listing denied error page).

> 
> HTTP Error 500-12 Application Restarting
> Internet Information Services
> 
> Technical Information (for support personnel)
> 
>     * Background:
>       The request cannot be processed while the Web site is restarting.
> 
>     * More information:
>       Microsoft Support 
>       http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q248013&sd=tech

I did finally get it to make it through, but I was willing to forge ahead 
only because this was the only source for the items I needed.

I feel so ... unclean ... having to configure Konqueror to lie to their
!@#$(% site only to get page after page of "IIS Server Error 500-12 
(application restarting)" and refreshing until I finally made it through the 
fsckin' checkout.

And then Wells Fargo conveniently fills in my email address for their 
e-wallet program (separate from the actual purchasing business I'm conducting 
on the web page, mind you). So even if you *don't* decide to sign up by 
entering a password and checking off the signup checkbox, they still get 
your email address. Thanks but no thanks, WF.

If anyone is considering using a shopping cart system, I'd make sure that it
worked with more than one company's browsers. After all, the entire purpose 
of the "checkout" process is to make it easy, and to turn as many "shoppers"
into "customers" as possible.

If you do decide to use Wells Fargo for your online payment shopping cart 
system, you might as well have a big flashing sign on your storefront that says:

"MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER CUSTOMERS ONLY! ALL OTHERS SHOP SOMEWHERE ELSE!"

I really hope Wells Fargo wakes up and will pay attention to "little" things
like this and revamps their payment system. Until then, you should seriously 
consider finding another e-commerce shopping cart vendor. Maybe one that
uses better webserver and application infrastructure.

As to why the Microsoft IIS server fails so spectacularly and visibly to your
customers when interacting with other browsers such as Mozilla, Opera, 
Netscape, and Konqueror - and specifically something other than Microsoft 
Internet Explorer - is something only Microsoft or Wells Fargo can answer.
Not that this type of problem is limited to Microsoft web application 
developers (such as Wells Fargo in this case). My experience, however, 
has been that Microsoft-centric webapp developers don't tend to be practice 
cross-browser compatibility. And this is not something that can be "bolted on"
to your application after it's been developed. Why pay twice for development?

To be more specific about the problems I experienced, their origin may not be
in IIS, nor in the application, but more accurately, I suspect in the 
Microsoft webserver clustering or their Application Center "solution". 

Mike808/


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