Any Purchase Prevents Return To Current Search Position

[Jean Severine]

There should be a RETURN TO MARKEPLACE button which returns the Buyer to the exact context he-she was in prior to the purchase.

Case in point, I may have made a purchase of a mask on the 15th page of search results for keyword "mask".  I expect to be able to return to where I was and continue my search for more masks from the point where I made the purchase.  Case in point, I may be half way through reviewing the products in a merchant store.  If I make a purchase in that store, I expect to be able to return to the exact position I was in at the time of a purchase, to continue shopping in that merchant's store.

Instead, in both cases above, any purchase prevents a return to where the Buyer was shopping, forcing the recreation of a new search profile, and a start from scratch at the beginning of the previous search content.

Right now the "continue shopping" option is a completely useless function, which prevents a Buyer from continuing purchases in a search context he-she has already invested considerable shopping time.

[Tari Landar]

Do you not simply hit your back button to go back to where you were? Or rather, is there somethign that prevents you from doing so?

That's exactly what I do, lol. I tend to put everything in my cart I want, or rather the ten limit, checkout, then just go back until I get where I was. A few extra clicks is pretty easy, especially when you're pages in to a search. 

 

[Jean Severine]

Teri, if you are talking about the "back" browser button then no, you cannot get back to where you were after making a purchase.  Thats the whole point of post.  After a purchase there is no button to return you to where you were.  Attempts to go back default first to the invoice page, telling you it's too late to change your order, and then the return to products takes you to a default product page that has nothing to do with where you were shopping.  Your only recourse is to initiate a new merchant-product search, and try to remember what page you were on when you made the purchase.  Using add-to-cart only bypasses the issue I am raising.

[Artorius Constantine]

I use chrome and do it all the time with the back button. Going back 3 pages from the checkout takes you right back where you were.

[Tamara Artis]

Since forever I open items in a new tab... there is one main tab with my search and, whenever I find something that I would like to check in details - right click and open in a new tab. 

[Tari Landar]

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Jean Severine wrote:

Teri, if you are talking about the "back" browser button then no, you cannot get back to where you were after making a purchase.  Thats the whole point of post.  After a purchase there is no button to return you to where you were.  Attempts to go back default first to the invoice page, telling you it's too late to change your order, and then the return to products takes you to a default product page that has nothing to do with where you were shopping.  Your only recourse is to initiate a new merchant-product search, and try to remember what page you were on when you made the purchase.  Using add-to-cart only bypasses the issue I am raising.

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I don't know what browser you use, but I use chrome. I can assure you that clicking back until I get to where I was, works just fine. I *never get sent back to a default product page. In fact, I just did it, to test it, after reading your reply to make certain it works peachy. It does. It takes a few clicks when I checkout with a cart full, and just the same when I simply buy now, but I go right back to where I was. I think it is perhaps a browser issue, rather than an MP alone issue. Add to cart doesn't bypass anything, other than needing to repeatedly checkout for no real good reason, lol. 

[Freya Mokusei]

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Jean Severine wrote:

There should be a RETURN TO MARKEPLACE button which returns the Buyer to the exact context he-she was in prior to the purchase.

Right now the "continue shopping" option is a completely useless function

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Can agree with this. Three reasons:-

 

1. Continue Shopping is so laughably useless (I'd never expected it to be useful). Redirect to the top level? Thanks so much. This is not expected behaviour and serves no users.
2. I understand changes to browsing strategy can improve the Marketplace experience but that's not practical given the low technical skillset found in most users.
3. eCommerce shoppers are trained against using the Back button after submitting forms as this can lead (on older sites) to duplicate purchases or billing.

It's reasonable, given the potential complexity of search terms (e.g. keywords, by Merchant, 96 per page) to have a way to retain these settings across pages. Right now, some search tool complexity drops out just by heading the wrong way (e.g. clicking a merchant's name to see their products resets view settings). There's no need for all these dumb extra clicks.

 

[Jean Severine]

First @ Tari.  Thanks for your comprehensive troubleshooting research.  I use Firefox as an external browser, and can assure you it's impossible to return to a previous search context following a purchase.  All the browser back button does is return me to the Invoice page, with subsequent hits of the back button only serving to refresh the Invoice page.  As Freya noted, use of the "Return to product page" button there, is completely useless, and does nothing more than whack you to the post-purchase "Thank you" blah-blah, Featured Items page.  But thanks for the insight on Chrome browser performance.

Second @ Tamara.  Your workaround is a procedure I had not ever considered before.  And with a little care and feeding of new tabs, does get around the key issue fo protecting your current search context.  Thank you.  Thank you.

Third @ Freya.  What can I say.  Succintly and acurately expressed.  I completely agree with you on all points, Freya.  Simply put, the system cries out for a post-purchase RETURN TO PRODUCT PAGE button that works, meaning it returns you directly to the search context page from which you made the item purchase.

[Freya Mokusei]

Thanks.

To add, secondlife.com already has this functionality - on the sign-in page.

Run whatever search context you like on Marketplace while logged out, then hit Sign In. After success you'll be returned to the exact page (incl. search context). E.g.

hxxps://id.secondlife.com/openid/login?return_to=https%3A%2F%2Fmarketplace.secondlife.com%2Fstores%2F7006%3Futf8%3D%25E2%259C%2593%26search%255Blayout%255D%3Dgallery%26search%255Bcategory_id%255D%3D%26search%255Bsort%255D%3D%26search%255Bper_page%255D%3D96%26search%255Bkeywords%255D%3D%26search%255Bprice_low%255D%3D%26search%255Bprice_high%255D%3D%26search%255Bprim_count_low%255D%3D%26search%255Bprim_count_high%255D%3D%26search%255Bcopy_permission%255D%3D0%26search%255Bmodify_permission%255D%3D0%26search%255Btransfer_permission%255D%3D0&show_join=true

(Note that I've neutralised this link - I don't want to direct people to any type of login page for security reasons.)

The escape-encoding (% signs) preserves the full referrer URI in the querystring named return_to. I took a look at this feature a few times before. This is all that's necessary for full implementation of a proper Continue Shopping button.

Maintaining a users choices through a website is fairly standard - Marketplace already has this halfway done simply by storing search context information in the URI.

It's not wise to try and get users to 'start over' and it smacks of lack of oversight that there's no button already providing this feature for those making purchases.

[Tari Landar]

I do agree there should be a better solution(especially after all this time). I was just unsure if there was a reason why you couldn't use back, such as it not working in certain browsers (which, as Freya already stated is usually frowned upon in most cases when making purchases, or filling in forms, etc...). Knowing that these sorts of things are rarely ever fixed, added, or whatever..by the powers that be, I figured the back button was at least a better method than starting over, lol, especially in the case of being in the middle of a search, multiple pages in.

I'd like to say they might look into it, but...it's doubtful they'll ever add this feature(which should be a requirement, not optional). As for the return to product page option...I don't think it ever actually did work, at all. I've always personally thought of it as decorative text that performs absolutely no useful function whatsoever.  They seem to have a few "features" on mp like that.