Tuesday 21 October 2014

User Experience of using Quick Response Code for LG and Monte Carlo

Today early morning, being in a festive Diwali mood, I saw two advertisements in Hindustan Times, that I liked and wanted to buy. One was the newly launched LG Water Purifier and other was the sweater from the new winter collection from Monte Carlo.

Both these products are my type of brands, the brands that I feel deliver value for money.

Notably, both these advertisements had a Quick Response (QR) codes printed on them. QR codes are best for impulsive buying through mobile devices.

As I was expecting an early morning call from my colleague, I had my phone near me. I used it to scan the QR code.

I expected that the QR code will take me to a micro-site, which will be adaptive and responsive, made for multiple mobile form factors. Also, this micro site should have a simile of the paper advertisement, for a brand recall and a BUY NOW button.

Both of these two QR codes linked sites disappointed me.

The LG Water Purifier, QR code had a caption saying that to find out more details scan the QR code. While the site linked to QR code was a generic site for LG India. So, end of my CX (Customer Experience) journey.

The Monte Carlo advertisement was more nearer to what I was expecting. It showed a page on my 5 inch Android Kitkat phone, that resembled the advertisement which had the QR code, and guess what, it also had a BUY button !!

But as soon as I pressed the buy button, the experience started to turn sour. The size check box was not rendering correctly in vertical position (portrait mode), so I tried tilting it to horizontal (landscape) and then I could select the size. Then I pressed Next button. It put the product into a shopping cart. I expected a Pay now button, but it highlighted the continue shopping button, much as in a PC site. Anyways, I hunted for the checkout button, and pressed it. The page showed garbled, HTML content all over, it got me completely turned off, and I lost patience and shut the mobile browser down. Another lost opportunity to monetize a portion of an expensive news print advertisement on a national daily.

Wish you all a Happy Diwali and a great shopping experience.  

Friday 3 October 2014

IMPS Merchant Payment is still a Challenge

IMPS Merchant Payment is still a Challenge

I was excited to see that ebay India was listed as one of the IMPS (Immediate Mobile Payment System) P2M (Person to Merchant) for online shopping. I decided to try them out for my next buy.

So, this weekend when was checking out from ebay, I decided to choose IMPS option. I usually use two banking accounts, HDFC and ICICI Bank. And both I realized did not support P2M OTP (one Time Password) generation. I also have Oxigen wallet, but since it was listed separately, and I know it works, so I tried using HDFC and ICICI banks. After two blotched attempts, and time outs, I realized that both these banks don't support P2M OTP transactions.

I did not try out SBI, as much earlier, I had given up on SBI, due to their attitude as well as their online banking User Experience. I had posted. one of the samplers captured aptly by a SBI customer earlier at G+

Thus, my conclusion is that the P2M User Experience (UX) needs to improve, it should be similar to that of a credit card transaction flow.

For example:

1. Shopper selects IMPS when checking out of online portal, Mobile number and MMID is asked once and can be saved in the profile for later re-use.

2. The shopper receives a OTP via a SMS on her registered mobile.

3. Shopper is promoted by the online for the OTP.

4. Transaction completes, confirmation is sent by the bank to shopper's mobile.

The SMS OTP gateway should ideally be managed by NPCI, for a uniform customer experience.