Have you tried thinking these ideas all the way through? When I'm coming up with a new idea/design/product I first try and imagine why the current iteration is the standard way of doing things. Also, I rack my brain trying to understand the marginal value added and if that's enough to overcome the inertia of the current iteration. This typically involves thinking of all possible scenarios, including corner cases and then evaluating how often each happens. E.g.
#1
a) What if people had multiple packages coming on the same day or from different shipping companies? Their phones would be beeping non-stop.
b) What if people don't have SMS plans? Each SMS would cost them.
c) If it requires an opt-in system, each store that offers shipping needs to require this field from each customer.
#3-#6 are just recommendations about best practices that don't necessarily take into account why things are the way they are. Stores want all this info because if you've invested this much time the first time, it makes future purchases easier and now you'll have a reason to come back. The question then becomes, how many initial purchases are lost and then what is the net effect in terms of Lifetime Value of the Customer.
Good questions:
#1 a) most people don't have multiple packages coming in. If they do, just remind them both are due today, simple. Only send SMS alerts between 9am-9pm so you don't wake them up. You can get their time zone info from their address.
#1 b) just use email alerts if they don't want SMS alerts.
#1 c) when customers checkout they have to enter their email and phone anyway just a checkbox next to both with the option of (alert me the day before my package is going to arrive). They can choose 1 or both.
The rest are just preferences, I added an edit on my blog to better explain the whole guest checkout is important thing.
Re #5, when I was looking online for laptops it was really annoying how some retailers just would not have pictures of the keyboards. Given how terrible some laptop keyboards are, this is kind of important. I hate when the important keys are squished up to fit in keys that just start up their bloatware. I want a decent-sized tab key, not a key that launches Outlook or Spammy Games Center every time I accidentally whack it trying to indent a line.
For #1 - I've always been pretty disappointed with the shipping companies tracking systems. Maybe I just don't understand what problems they are having, but if you have to scan items each step of the way, regardless of scale, shouldn't it be fairly straightforward to get the newest data for each package to the website pretty quickly?
Have you tried thinking these ideas all the way through? When I'm coming up with a new idea/design/product I first try and imagine why the current iteration is the standard way of doing things. Also, I rack my brain trying to understand the marginal value added and if that's enough to overcome the inertia of the current iteration. This typically involves thinking of all possible scenarios, including corner cases and then evaluating how often each happens. E.g.
#1 a) What if people had multiple packages coming on the same day or from different shipping companies? Their phones would be beeping non-stop. b) What if people don't have SMS plans? Each SMS would cost them. c) If it requires an opt-in system, each store that offers shipping needs to require this field from each customer.
#3-#6 are just recommendations about best practices that don't necessarily take into account why things are the way they are. Stores want all this info because if you've invested this much time the first time, it makes future purchases easier and now you'll have a reason to come back. The question then becomes, how many initial purchases are lost and then what is the net effect in terms of Lifetime Value of the Customer.