The laziest possible customer of your product should be able to engage with your product with ease. Seth Godin is right : “If you can, remove steps. Each step costs you dearly”. Conversion from viewing to purchase online is in the decimals ( 1% of 1% actually buy)
Amazon’s ONE CLICK shopping button was genius. There exists this HUGE opportunity both online and offline to remove barriers to purchase. And the best part is, removing/culling is easier than adding features. Caveat : It needs more smarts though. Lot more. That useless form to fill before you enroll, buy, join, purchase is losing you a lot of people. Why can’t it be via facebook/google ID ?
I recently donated to Wikipedia versus some Indian charities because the enrollment forms online for the latter are just so damn tedious. Wikipedia JUST WANTS the bare minimum details about me before they take my money. I actually prefer that so they get mine. Donations via SMS is a brilliant idea. Many of us don’t donate not because we are not altruistic but because the hoops are too much. Like to Payment should be a one hop jump.Remove the steps.
One click buy. One step process.
Third Eye Observations 
Cudn’t agree more !! The ONE thing i hate about online shopping is when that page pops up asking me to open an account !
Some sites have gone a step further and wont even let you see details of products until you register ! That is an attempt to increase their “registered users” base but is in fact making me run from their site and never come back !