Zappos annoying out of stock message

It’s so annoying. So very, very annoying. Here’s how it works:

Pick a shoe, and select a size on the page with a drop down box. If the shoe is out of stock, this pop-up message appears. The only way to change the size or color again is to click “close this window” every time you adjust the drop down.

This is ridiculous. It probably takes more work for them to check the stock, and use a javascript pop-up, than it would be to just show me on the page which shoes are in stock.

So not only am I told I can’t have these shoes, but I’m inconvenienced because I have this pop-up box in the way now. Ahhhh!

Zappos, you should be ashamed. You’re customer service is so awesome, yet your web site is as lackluster as a grey wall.

I’ll still buy all my shoes from you though.

IxDA site notification

This is a good spot to put it. Well done IxDA, I would expect no less from you. Notice the yellow is nested inside two dark stripes, making it hard to miss. It doesn’t disappear after it’s been there for a while, which is my preferred behavior of site notifications like this. If you show me something important, and I turn my head to do something else (which happens way more often than you think) I might miss it and kick the dirt with frustration because I can’t get it back.

Don’t make your users frustrated. They will leave and you’ll have no idea why.