love that you are using dataURI.
it’s so edgy.

the downside of framing these sites though is that they use popup ads. screenshots are more appropriate but then you are back to uploading images to your webserver or using a service via bookmarklet etc.

as for the point of your post… yeah bad example of a good purchase flow. ideally, and technically, a purchase can be made without leaving a page (no refreshes etc). but their is an issue of security. i’m on the side that most sites should use SSL on most if not all of the pages. some pages can be used either way and let user toggle back to https. other pages can force https. the problem is with linking to outside sources that are not secure. then your ssl certificate looks compromised as your page is now only ‘partially secure’. however, a good music blog can offer a secure page for purchasing that integrates another 3rd party secure page, either via iframe, javascript and APIs.

now that you have posted a bad example… could you post (or refer to an older post) that demonstrates a good example?

cheers.

sull