Media Temple’s Usability Faux Pas

Clearly, I’m a fan of Media Temple, but today I was shocked by a piece of bad usability on their site when I was looking into signing up a new client for some DV hosting.

The client for this new job is actually the client of a client and I was charged with setting up the new hosting. My client wanted to know all the information that the MT sign-up form would ask for during registration so that we would only have to ask the end client for their details once. I went to the MT sign-up form to write down a list of all the fields that were asked for.

As can be seen in the image their ‘activate’ process is as a three step affair.

The first step wants to know a domain name to associate with the new account. Since I wasn’t actually registering I put in ‘test.com’ so that I could ‘continue order’.

The second step of the registration form is where the bulk of the fields are. It asks for first and last name, company, email, contact and billing address as well as the credit card details. I made a note of all the required fields and then I wondered if step 3 had any additional ones.

In order to get to step 3 I needed to fill in some more dummy information. I populated all of the different fields with variations of the word ‘test’ and then I filled in the universal Visa testing number 4111 1111 1111 1111. I then clicked the ‘continue order’ button at the bottom of the page.

I was astounded to see Media Temple process and finalize my order and I soon learned that the ‘Confirmation’ of step 3 is actually the ‘Thank you for your order’ page.

Needless to say, this is not what I expected. Why? Because the button at the bottom of page 2 doesn’t say ‘Place Order Now’ or ‘Confirm Purchase’ but instead says ‘Continue Order’ just like the button at the end of step 1 said; the button that didn’t place my order when I pressed it the last time; the button that instead advanced me to the next step just like I thought this ‘continue order’ button would. I also didn’t expect the order to processed because step 3 is the ‘Confirmation’ stage, which is pretty universally recognized as the ‘please review your order details to make sure there haven’t been any mistakes made and then we’ll finalize this thing’ stage.

This is a usability fail. Every other website that sells something — be it Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, PayPal, whoever — has the final step in the order process be an order summary page that offers the opportunity to edit the order details and then finalize the order with a big, fat button that clearly states that pressing it will place the order. I am so conditioned by this common practice that it didn’t even occur to me that pressing the ‘continue order’ button at the end of step 2 would place my order.

Media Temple, you have an awesome service but this little fly-in-the-ointment is embarrassing, especially because it occurs when people are signing up for your service (first impressions and all that). Thankfully, this is an easy fix in the short term: get in there and change that button to something more appropriate. Over the long-term, when the form is being redesigned, create an order confirmation page that let’s users review their details before finalizing. Everyone else is doing it and you should adopt the practice.

With much love.