Having just had an annoying experience attempting to buy some items online I thought I would post my experience here and see if it strikes a chord with other people.

I went to a website to purchase some items for a forthcoming trip, they had just what I wanted or near enough to make no difference, so I put the items into the online shopping basket and clicked the checkout button.

First gripe, why do so many of these online sites want you to create an account, I do not want my details littered all over the internet on unsecured databases behind sites which I have purchased one item from once in my lifetime, in the current climate of identity theft and fraud it dones not seem the best thing to be doing.

So I created an account and got to the payment screen, I intended paying using my Visa Debit card, it used to be simple, select card Amex/Master/Visa/JCB possibly one or two others but it is immediately obvious what you need to select, now particularly with Visa there is a list of three or four different sorts of Visa card, I am not interested in twenty questions to simply make my payment, the payment system can work it out from the card number what type of Visa card it is, it could probably even work out what sort of card it is completely from that, so why do I need to make a guess as to what this site is currently calling my card and get an authorisation declined message when I get it wrong.

Bottom line, maybe its time for some of these sites to revisit there checkout systems, and do some useability testing on them, and design a system that actually helps people purchase items instead of making it as difficult as possible.