As one of the people involved in designing the system in question, I'd like to say two things:
1) The author describes the experience of the first-time customer who has never entered a shipping address or credit card. The Gilt checkout experience is optimized for users to be able to checkout as quickly as possible. What he calls "the last step" is actually the first thing a repeat customer sees.
2) Most of what he's complaining about are intentional choices based on A/B testing.
OP here. Thanks for the response. All of this is 1) pure speculation without any data or understanding of the underlying business strategy 2) intended as constructive criticism rather than firebombing and throwing stones to be controversial for controversy's sake.
IMHO - showing price consistently (even w/o a shipping address, my item price didn't show), making order modification easy, and placing action buttons below the explanatory elements that motivate clicking that button are fairly uncontroversial points. Maybe they are more controversial than I envisioned.
Moreover, I understand things are optimized for checking out quickly and perhaps bias the UX toward repeat customers, but I don't see why first time customers (who you're fighting to make into repeat customers) are deprioritized or lack their own customized, responsive UX that would enable speed for repeat customers and ease of use for first timers.
Hey kscaldef - some observations I had from my time on the site:
When I visited the site (had never heard of it before) I had an overlay that asked for my email in order to view the site. I was unable to close it - tried hitting escape, looked for a close button, etc. I refreshed and navigated to 3 different pages using the top nav before the site removed the overlay.
Now when I'm on the site (men's clothing) when I try to click something in your main nav (like Baby&Kids) I get another sign up overlay.
Maybe I'm not your target demographic, but your site actively prevents me from browsing your products.
My guess is that this is Gilt's model. To them the cost of users like you navigating away (perhaps without entering your email address) is smaller than the benefit they get from getting people who wouldn't otherwise enter their email addresses to do so.
It's a business tactic that arguably prioritizes conversions and bottom line over general user experience. Commonly done but dubious when it comes to whether it is good for the end user.
1) The author describes the experience of the first-time customer who has never entered a shipping address or credit card. The Gilt checkout experience is optimized for users to be able to checkout as quickly as possible. What he calls "the last step" is actually the first thing a repeat customer sees.
2) Most of what he's complaining about are intentional choices based on A/B testing.