 |
| CNN WEB SITES: |
|
| TIME INC. SITES: |
| MORE SERVICES: |
| video on demand |
| video archive |
| audio on demand |
| news email services |
| free email accounts |
| desktop headlines |
| pointcast |
| pagenet |
| DISCUSSION: |
| message boards |
| chat |
| feedback |
| SITE GUIDES: |
| help |
| contents |
| search |
| FASTER ACCESS: |
| europe |
| japan |
| WEB SERVICES: |
From...
Online shopping frustrates customers
October
2, 1998
Web posted at 2:20 PM EDT
by Tom Diederich
(IDG) -- Electronic-commerce Web sites may be losing enormous amounts of potential revenue every day simply because online consumers, frustrated by efforts to find goods on their shopping lists, are clicking away from virtual stores and, in some cases, never return, according to a new report from Zona Research, Inc. in Redwood City, Calif.
Zona surveyed 239 people who use the Internet regularly and found that one in three had trouble finding products they were looking for. They also said they had abandoned online searches for merchandise at least once during the past two months.
|
|
||
|---|---|---|
 |
IDG.net home page | |
| Computerworld's home page | ||
| Computerworld "Emmerce" | ||
| Get Media Grok and The Industry Standard Intelligencer delivered for free | ||
| Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net | ||
| IDG.net's personal news page | ||
| Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you | ||
|
Search IDG.net in 12 languages |
||
| Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletter for IT leaders | ||
| News Radio | ||
 |
Computerworld Minute | |
|
|
Fusion audio primers | |
"We were not expecting to find these kinds of numbers because this was basically a group of savvy computer users," said Jack Staff, chief economist at Zona Research. "And when you have almost one-third of them saying Web shopping was extremely difficult or somewhat difficult, we think the average population is having even more difficulty."
The results are significant, Staff said, because they suggest a significant loss of potential revenue. "If you get 100 hits a day and one-quarter of them are dropping off -- and especially if it's related to your bottom line -- then that could have a lot of impact." And if shoppers consistently can't find what they're looking on a site, they may leave and never return.
To reverse this trend, online merchants must bring the product to the customer in a way that is more like a "brick-and-mortar situation," Staff said. "Web vendors need to concentrate on making it easier for Web shoppers to quickly and painlessly find the exact products they want," the report said.
One problem is the way Web sites have set up their search capabilities, he pointed out. Right now, if you go online to a site's search area and hit "coat," you might get "coat of paint," you might get "dress coat" or you might get "sports coat," when what you're looking for is a purple and orange cashmere coat in a 42 long," he said.
Intuitive searches allow shoppers to locate a specific item or could even ask permission to search under expanded parameters -- in other words, look for a cashmere coat in a different color, Staff said.
About one-third of the 239 Internet users polled said they shopped online at least twice a week, while more than 25% said they shopped online once a week and another one-third said they shopped online once every other week. For the survey, "shopping" was defined as buying as well as browsing for merchandise.