Study finds flaws in online retailing
PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb 25 (Reuters) - While online
retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. <AMZN.O> are the darlings of
Wall Street, a study finds that many of those companies have to
brush up on Main Street retailing tactics to make them the
darlings of customers.
"Contrary to media hype, web commerce is not a revolution
but an evolution in retailing. Online stores fail to translate
the lessons learned from centuries of land-based retailing and
merchandising into successful online shopping experiences for
consumers," said Shelley Taylor, head of a consulting firm
bearing her name and author of a study of 50 e-commerce sites.
"Even though technology has changed, the way we humans
process purchasing decisions has remained the same," Taylor
said.
The study, titled Click-Here Commerce, found that many
websites discourage laptop users, people with older computers
and first time users from gaining entrance to online stores,
because of technology barriers or software problems.
Click-Here Commerce analyzed 50 consumer e-commerce sites
representing a cross-industry sample including technology,
entertainment, books & music, apparel, sports goods, travel and
leisure.
Taylor's survey used 175 criteria to evaluate online
shopping sites and found that CDnow Inc. <CDNW.O>, Barnes &
Noble Inc.'s <BKS.N> barnesandnoble.com, Brainplay, Lands' End
Inc. <LE.N> and Viacom Inc.'s <VIA.A> Blockbuster had the
highest ranked sites in terms of content and store features.
The study found that only two of 50 websites offered a
reduced bandwidth or text only option, which is friendlier to
computers that are not up to date, and one site specified what
Internet web browser would be best to use.
About 24 percent of the sites lacked global navigation to
help online shoppers move between different departments of the
Internet site.
Click Here Commerce also found that 24 percent of the sites
offer no pre-sale assistance and 32 percent fail to provide
purchase instructions. Only 12 percent offered to provide third
party reviews of products and only one offered a
features/benefits comparison.
Only 30 percent of sites offer details about product
availability and only 8 percent mention what items are
currently included in the customer's online "shopping cart."
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