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Notebook

A Clog in the Online Bill Pay

18 Nov 2009 at 9 PM

Once per month, every month, for several years I visit the City of Lafayette web site to pay my water bill. Every month, I experience a flood of frustration. (get it? water, flood?) My epic journey includes buttons of confusion, terrible tool-tips, poor prioritization, and a head-to-head battle with the deadly web form of doom!

The process starts off simple enough, I load up the web site, and right there at the top in a bar labeled "Quick Links" is a link titled, "Pay Utilities".

In a minor foreshadowing of the confusion ahead, the tool-tip for the "Pay Utilities" link reads, "Digital Media".

Regardless of the incorrect tool-tip, I feel confident about my choice of links, and I continue on my way to paying my water bill. Next stop, a screen four large buttons across the top.

After a scan of the options, I spot what I'm looking for, "Online Bill Pay & Other Payment Methods". A click and a refresh later and I'm on my way to... the same page... what? huh?

Now the button is highlighted in blue. What a nice feature. A tool-tip reading, "Click to turn blue" would be useful.

Still, that link sounds too promising. In my mind, it can't be wrong. So I click it a couple more times for good measure, before giving up and moving down the page.

If you enjoy a healthy serving of paragraphs with your online bill pay, the City of Lafayette has got your covered!

First, I'm treated to information on setting up an Automatic Bill Payment. This seems promising, until I realize it requires a physical piece of paper, a physical envelope, a physical stamp, and a physical mailbox. That is just too much offline for my kind of online bill pay system.

Side note... I am making an assumption that people coming to a web site titled, "Online Bill Pay & Other Payment Methods" have an idea what they want to do. I suggest some, perhaps most, want to pay their bill online!!

Please consider, people who setup automatic bill pay, do it once. After that it is, how do you say... automatic!!! Which is why it makes perfect sense to give it top billing over something customers might use monthly, like, oh, say, perhaps online bill pay.

Moving on... I have the option to mail another piece of paper which would cancel my automatic payment. Something that I hope happens less frequently than setting up automatic payments.

Finally, about half way down the page in a section titled, "Online Bill Payment" is a line with just about every style you could use (big, bullet, capitalized, bold) except the one that would indicate it's a link (underline).

It doesn't help that the page contains three styles of links.

Luckily, the line starts with, "CLICK HERE" so I have some indication it's a link and not the section header it feels like.

Ironically, this link has improved over the years. In a previous life the words, "CLICK HERE" were not clickable. Ideally, one would front load the link with an action to describe what it allows you to do, something like, "PAY YOUR BILL ONLINE" might be nice. If it must include the words "click here" I highly suggest they be clickable. But that was fixed some time ago (thank you), let us move along.

After a click and a login process which, for my convenience, requires a twelve digit account number, a form loads for to pay my bill.

The form is simple enough, it includes my account information, the amount to pay, the date to pay, and some options for future payments.

The default date for the payment is the due date at the end of the month, but I came here to pay my bill today, not in two weeks, so I change it to today's date. Otherwise, everything looks good, and I "Submit Payment".

Doh! Apparently, I cannot pay my bill today. The soonest I can pay it is three days from now. Good thing I always pay it early, eh? Back up, change the date to three days from now, submit again and my water flows for another month.

How was I supposed to know that I couldn't make a payment for three days? I've paid this bill online for five years, and every month I have to click the submit button to find out the magical, "earliest available payment date".

In reality, I suspect most people are able to pay their water bill in one way or another. Still, a few minor changes could streamline this process. For starters....

1. Create an Payments page with four clear options:
   • Pay your bill online
   • Pay by Phone
   • Pay by Mail
   • Setup/Cancel automatic bill payment
2. Separate the instructions for each option onto it's own page
3. Show the earliest available payment date on the online bill pay form
4. Fix the tool tip in your quick links
5. Pick consistent font size and color, with underlined links
6. Or call me, I'm happy to help

What about you, any terrible online bill pay experiences to share?

“Four to six weeks in the laboratory can save you an hour in the library”

George Quarderer