Blog - Page 23 of 31 - Rachele DiTullio

Kudos to Half Price Books for Guest Account Creation after Checkout

Rachele DiTullio5 April 201625 April 2024Desktop, Websiteaccounts, good

I’ve studied a lot of in-depth research on e-commerce and one of the more disruptive user experiences is requiring customers to create accounts before allowing them to give you money.

Of the top 100 sites evaluated by the Baymard Institute in a 2012 study, 76% allowed guest checkout.

graph: 35% of companies grossing over $1 billion and 21% of the rest require an account to make an online purchase — *Graphs: 76% don’t require an account to purchase, courtesy Baymard Institute*

But only one of these companies (ranked #1 of 100) allowed a guest user to create an account after checkout. The checkout process should be linear, so asking a customer to create an account at the end of the purchasing process makes sense and is a better user experience.

It’s difficult to find examples of sites doing this since it requires making a purchase, but I did come across one finally: Half Price Books, a Texas-based used books chain.

Screenshot: HPB.com page allowing a customer to create an account after checking out

Good job! Now just remove the password confirmation field 🙂

Twitter Adds Alt Text Authoring for Some Users

Rachele DiTullio29 March 201617 September 2025MobileiOS

I posted recently about how sharing images through services like Twitter are often inaccessible to users with visual impairments because they lack meaningful alt text. In its March 28 release (version 6.50 for iOS), Twitter now provides some mobile users the option of including alt text. (No word on when the feature will be available for website users.)

To enable the ability to add alt text to your posted pictures from within the iOS Twitter app:

Go to your profile page
Tap the settings (gear) icon
Choose the “Accessibility” option
Turn on the “Compose image description” option
Save your settings

The first time you insert an image into a tweet, you will be prompted to “Describe this image for the visually impaired”.

Twitter image prompt to describe this image for the visually impaired — *Screenshot of the image upload prompt*

Tap the “Add description” button to provide a meaningful explanation of the contents of the image.

screenshot of the field to type in the image description for a watermelon pinata — *Screenshot typing the image description*

Looking at the source code via the website, we can see the image contains the description within the alt attribute.

<img style="width: 100%; top: -72px;" data-aria-label-part="" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ceu_z_PW4AEchnB.jpg" alt="Watermelon piñata broken open">

For more information on this feature, check out the Twitter Support article Making images accessible for people on Twitter.

Nissan Gas Gauge is Misleading

Rachele DiTullio22 March 201619 February 2024In Real Life

For more than 12 years, I’ve been staring at this gas gauge that looks like it’s divided into quarters but is actually bigger towards F and smaller towards E. The discrepancy is easier to see with the gauge rotated.

Photo of a gas gauge with the needle almost to full — *Nissan gas gauge*

It’s just weird and confusing. I’d like to know why they did it this way. The only plausible reason I can think of is that this car has a large reserve of 3 gallons once the needle drops to E and the gas light comes on. So taking the reserve into account, the last ‘quarter’ on the gauge kind of makes sense.

LPT: See the arrow next to the gas pump icon? That tells you which side of the car the gas cap is. Useful in rentals!