Multiple/duplicated orders.

[Richard]

We'd thought we'd document this for comment. A customer at a University (not
a student!) placed an order with us which was duplicated 10 times
(successive order numbers). When we called she advises that she did not do
anything unusual - the only shopsite e-mail receipt she got was the very
LAST order number (??), not any of the prior 9 orders. The date stamp for
the orders shows no more than 10 seconds between orders and in some cases a
few seconds.
Anyone experienced this?
Richard

[Chris]

We occasionally get 2 in a row....no more...which I just contribute to a
customer with a happy trigger finger on the "Submit" button.

Chris

MLCS

mlcswoodworking.com

Richard wrote:

We'd thought we'd document this for comment. A customer at a University (not
a student!) placed an order with us which was duplicated 10 times
(successive order numbers). When we called she advises that she did not do
anything unusual - the only shopsite e-mail receipt she got was the very
LAST order number (??), not any of the prior 9 orders. The date stamp for
the orders shows no more than 10 seconds between orders and in some cases a
few seconds.
Anyone experienced this?
Richard

[loren_d_c]

2 in a row is generally caused by an inexperienced web user who thinks they have
to click twice on web links like they do to open a document on their desktop. If
your server is slow, it may be impatience, someone clicks once and they don't
think something is happening fast enough so they click again. There is not really
anything technologically speaking that can be done about that, although I have
seen quite a few sites (not just sites using ShopSite, either) add text that
specifically tells the shopper to only click once. These kind of duplicates are
usually pretty easy to spot in the backoffice, though, because the date stamp on
them is only seconds off, or maybe even the exact same second in the case of a
doubleclick.

I have only seen a LOT of duplicates like that when there is problem with the
merchant email address (or some other non-fatal problem that allows the order to
go through, but where the shopper can still go back and submit again) However, I
would think that in that case the shopper would have received all of the email
receipts and they would have noticed an error in the shopping process and noticed
that they had to submit the order several times to get it to go through.

If this only happens once, then you could probably chalk it up to some temporary
issue with the mail program on your server. If it happens more than once, you
should try to reproduce the error yourself, if something is repeatable then it is
usually pretty easy to figure out what the problem is.

-Loren




Chris wrote:

We occasionally get 2 in a row....no more...which I just contribute to a
customer with a happy trigger finger on the "Submit" button.

Chris

MLCS

mlcswoodworking.com

Richard wrote:

We'd thought we'd document this for comment. A customer at a University (not
a student!) placed an order with us which was duplicated 10 times
(successive order numbers). When we called she advises that she did not do
anything unusual - the only shopsite e-mail receipt she got was the very
LAST order number (??), not any of the prior 9 orders. The date stamp for
the orders shows no more than 10 seconds between orders and in some cases a
few seconds.
Anyone experienced this?
Richard

[Alex Pukinskis]

Loren wrote:

2 in a row is generally caused by an inexperienced web user who thinks they have
to click twice on web links like they do to open a document on their desktop. If
your server is slow, it may be impatience, someone clicks once and they don't
think something is happening fast enough so they click again. There is not really
anything technologically speaking that can be done about that...

This is not true - there are any number of possible solutions. For
example, Shopsite could certainly be written to check to see whether an
identical order was placed within the last 10 minutes - if it was,
Shopsite could either ignore the duplicate order or ask the user
whether they really wanted to submit a duplicate order.

It's something I've had to do on numerous other projects, and it's
usally been pretty trivial to code. I'm actually surprised it's not
there already, considering all of the other little details the Shopsite
developers have quietly taken care of. (This comment is really not
meant to be disparaging at all - Shopsite is a great product!)

-Alex

[Brandon Eley]

Wouldn't it be possible to do this based on IP addresses? I.E. if an order
has already been placed from an IP in the last 60 seconds all futher orders
will be ignored?

This would help us a lot as we get quite a few of the "happy clickers" too.

Brandon Eley
2BigFeet.com

"Alex Pukinskis" <alexweb@satoridesign.com> wrote in message
news:3DD4226B.8020006@satoridesign.com...

Loren wrote:
2 in a row is generally caused by an inexperienced web user who thinks
they have
to click twice on web links like they do to open a document on their
desktop. If
your server is slow, it may be impatience, someone clicks once and they
don't
think something is happening fast enough so they click again. There is
not really
anything technologically speaking that can be done about that...

This is not true - there are any number of possible solutions. For
example, Shopsite could certainly be written to check to see whether an
identical order was placed within the last 10 minutes - if it was,
Shopsite could either ignore the duplicate order or ask the user
whether they really wanted to submit a duplicate order.

It's something I've had to do on numerous other projects, and it's
usally been pretty trivial to code. I'm actually surprised it's not
there already, considering all of the other little details the Shopsite
developers have quietly taken care of. (This comment is really not
meant to be disparaging at all - Shopsite is a great product!)

-Alex

[Dan Coutu]

Brandon Eley wrote:

Wouldn't it be possible to do this based on IP addresses? I.E. if an order
has already been placed from an IP in the last 60 seconds all futher orders
will be ignored?

This would help us a lot as we get quite a few of the "happy clickers" too.

Brandon Eley
2BigFeet.com

"Alex Pukinskis" <alexweb@satoridesign.com> wrote in message
news:3DD4226B.8020006@satoridesign.com...

Loren wrote:

2 in a row is generally caused by an inexperienced web user who thinks

they have

to click twice on web links like they do to open a document on their

desktop. If

your server is slow, it may be impatience, someone clicks once and they

don't

think something is happening fast enough so they click again. There is

not really

anything technologically speaking that can be done about that...

This is not true - there are any number of possible solutions. For
example, Shopsite could certainly be written to check to see whether an
identical order was placed within the last 10 minutes - if it was,
Shopsite could either ignore the duplicate order or ask the user
whether they really wanted to submit a duplicate order.

It's something I've had to do on numerous other projects, and it's
usally been pretty trivial to code. I'm actually surprised it's not
there already, considering all of the other little details the Shopsite
developers have quietly taken care of. (This comment is really not
meant to be disparaging at all - Shopsite is a great product!)

-Alex

There are least two ways to solve this problem. As far I know so far they
both would need to be implemented by the folks at ShopSite though.

The first is to write a wee bit o' client-side JavaScript that establishes
and OnClick handler for the Submit Order button. The OnClick handler sets a
flag to indicate that the order has been submitted and then invokes the
form submit() function to send the data away. Subsequent clicks would again
invoke the OnClick handler and it would see that the Submitted flag is
already set and simply skip the submit() step. This solution is clean and
easy but will not work on browsers that have JavaScript disabled.

The second is a bit more complicated but will work with any browser. It
depends on the order.cgi code checking the browser session id against the
shopping basket id. (This assumes that a given shopping basket can get
ordered once and only once. If this is not true then an additional
flag/status needs to be maintained by ShopSite internally in order to track
the order submission status.) The basic algorithm is that multiple
submissions of an order where the session id and shopping basket id are
identical would be double (triple, etc.) clicks rather than valid
additional orders. A valid additional order might have the same session id
but a different shopping basket id because the buyer went back and threw
the same items into a new shopping basket.

So I guess this could turn into an enhancement request right?