Didn’t anyone ever tell you to get there 2 hours before the flight departs?

Last night I had to pay a parking ticket and order checks.

The parking ticket site had a simple UI, but it did the simple things wrong. For instance, it told me that I had to enter a 10 digit ticket number and that I should “try” to pad it with zeroes. I’d imagine that people using any normal programming language would able to code up a subroutine that does that about as quickly as it takes to write a paragraph telling users how to do it.

The parking ticket site sent me to payflow, which is secure and reliable, but looks disreputable (no production values) and won’t accept credit card numbers with spaces or dashes.

The site for ordering checks was designed by “old school” marketing people. It had a testimonial up front about how the ordering process made somebody “feel comfortable.” I had to click three times to find the order form… The third click took about a minute of thinking because it was a sidebar link and I was worried it was going to take me in circles.

The ordering process itself was terrible. I tried to see if I could find some cool custom checks — all I could find was Superman checks and it wasn’t even clear what they cost. I finally went back to the initial screen where I could order the same checks I got last time.

Along the way the site explained inarticulately that the order was going to be billed to my bank account — it read something like “ALL YOUR CASH IS BELONG TO US”.

In the last week I’ve used several e-commerce sites that were easy to use… They adhere to an unwritten standard that some sites just don’t get.