One bright spot on the economic horizons around the world
seems to be continued consumer spending and ecommerce is
clearly a part of this, with sales estimated to be in excess
of $9.9 Billion in the next three months according to
ACNielsen. But, there is a dark cloud hovering over this
sunny ecommerce landscape called poor web site design. Let's
explore some of the reasons why consumers are not reaching
for their credit cards after perusing an ecommerce web site.
There is a huge knowledge gap about how the web is really
driving online and offline commerce. A recent eCommercePulse
survey of more than 33,000 surfers conducted by Nielsen/Net
ratings and Harris Interactive indicates ecommerce sites are
driving more purchases offline (phone, catalogue, retail
store sales) than online. Many consumers are using the web to
effortlessly compare features and pricing - then, calling the
company or visiting their local retail store to make a
purchase. Clearly many companies need to factor this
information in when analyzing their online and offline
marketing expenditures and related ROI.
According to a recent Zona Research and Keynote Systems Report
released earlier this summer over $25 Billion (USD) was lost
in ecommerce due to users abandoning the web site prior to a
purchase being made or during the process. The users just
gave up because the load times (the amount of time it takes a
page to be displayed in a browser) were painfully slow.
Today's online shoppers aren't a real patient group, they
want information presented in 12-18 seconds, or they are off
to another site that works.
Unfortunately many firms have allocated a disproportionate
amount of resources for advertising and not enough on good
web site design and back end infrastructure. It's critical to
make the market aware of a site, but if the potential
customers are not presented with the right navigation and
menus (read information architecture) they will not buy. Case
in point, according to recent Dataquest surveys (and others)
between 20-40% of most users don't purchase because they
can't figure out how to easily move around the web site.
Many firms fail to properly integrate their ecommerce
components with the overall site design. The in-house
developers or outside design firm concentrate on the sexy
parts of the web site design process (the graphics, branding,
look and feel) and only focus on the ecommerce process after
the primary web site design is completed - making ecommerce
an afterthought.
A large number of ecommerce web sites don't even list a phone
number, arbitrarily forcing people to contact the company
electronically - this is a real problem, as many people don't
want to use e-mail or forms as their primary means of
communicating, they want the immediacy of the telephone.
It's very surprising, but approx 30% of ecommerce sites don't
have a search capability that actually works - in many cases
it just returns gobblygook. This is a real irritant for many
online shoppers who want to find goods and services quickly
and efficiently - the need for speed should be the ecommerce
merchants marketing mantra and a good search capability gives
users a way to quickly find products.
One of the most important parts of any web site is the home
or index page, as it aggregates the design elements and
information architecture. So many index page are cluttered
and poorly designed, loaded with poor graphics, bad menu
structures, oddball words or my absolute least favorite,
30-60 second Flash animation sequences which force the user
to sit and stare at a blank screen while the animation loads.
Privacy statements are about as exciting as filing taxes
(unless you know your getting a refund) - they are out of
necessity filled with legal terminology that needs to be
addressed succinctly and in a way that makes a consumer feel
comfortable about doing business with an ecommerce web site.
Unfortunately, many ecommerce web site privacy statements
look like an afterthought, or, are so "attorney driven"
(three pages - who has time to read this?) people are turned
off by them. It's very important that a privacy statement be
a compromise doc brokered between legal and marketing.
We are a full service ad agency so I don't mind shooting
arrows in the direction of my peers - too much attention is
being placed on web site advertising metrics (clickthrough
rates, certified traffic to substantiate ad rates, etc.) and
not enough on how people find and use an ecommerce web site.
The industry standard web site analysis tool is Web Trends,
but one of the least understood aspects of this product is
tracking how people find and move around a web site via
reports which can be pulled from the server log files; i.e.
where did the visitors come from, what pages do they visit,
how long do they stay, what are their traffic patterns, etc.?
Ecommerce companies should be analyzing these "digital
customer tracks" to better understand how to improve their
front end marketing processes and back end web site design.
