I saw the topic Business Use & Pre-Order Limit of One - When Can I Order Another?, and realized that I’m probably going to want to get a 2nd framework laptop for work. So I’m keen to avoid the horrible workflows for getting work laptops that I’ve had to deal with in the past.
One very simple thing that makes a huge difference to the having-my-employer-buy-me-a-laptop UX is the ability to save & share a purchase configuration.
Here’s what my ideal workflow would look like:
-
I go through the configuration flow in
/products/laptop/configuration/edituntil I get to the “Review” stage. -
Instead of clicking “Add To Cart” I click the “Share a Link to this Configuration” button.
-
This produces a link that looks like
/products/from-code/{my-code}. Probably it also displays a modal like saying something like "frame.work/products/from-code/1337badc0dedadded to clipboard!" -
Anyone visiting this link would go straight to the “Review” stage of the configuration flow, which would display the same configuration which I had chosen in step (0).
- I send this link to my employer via email or slack saying “buy this for me with the company credit card.”
In the past, I’ve had to deal with ordering systems which were so inflexible that the easiest way to get my employer to buy me a new laptop was to just sit down next to somebody with access to the company credit card and tell them which options to click. I hate this. Also, with everyone working remote these days, it’s not even really possible anymore.
In theory, you could go all the way and implement a checkout flow that completely separates the order’s recipient and the order’s payer. So I could create a configuration, add it to my cart, check out, set my shipping address, then click a “Send this order to somebody else to be paid” button. But this is probably way too much trouble to go to for a company which is primarily in the making-laptops-and-laptop-accessories business, and not a generic ecommerce company. Making a link-somebody-to-my-config code is all I’ve ever wanted out of such systems, and substantially easier to implement.