Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks used by retailers or also known as e-retailers. The two biggest reasons for customers leaving an e-retailer are service failures and poor e-retailer response to customer needs. A good e-retailer response creates greater loyalty and business prospect from that customer.
Service failures can be generally classified into a number of broad categories respective of the type of e-retailer these are such as poor information quality, order problems, site design problems, billing problems payment problems, security problems, unsolicited contacts, personal detail release, post sale support and disposal / replacement options.
Example of an Ecommerce Failure
Causes
The boo.com website design was not suitable for its targeted market, it complicated design made it such that user or customers had difficulty browsing their webpage and usually had trouble to get where they wanted to go. The site’s navigation techniques were equally bad as it changed as the customer moved around the site, which frustrated those who simply wanted to buy their apparels .The site relied heavily on JavaScript and Flash technology to display pseudo-3D (two-and-a-half dimension) views and also Miss Boo, a sales-assistant-style avatar.
The first publicly released version of the website was so large; the home page alone was several hundred kilobytes which meant that users had to wait for some time for the site to load.
Furthermore the display of the site was saved and set to a fixed size window that restricted and limited the space available to view product information that was significantly important to customers. Boo.com’s website was designed for 56K modems and above. At that time broadband technologies were still not widely available, so many customer whose connections were incompatible could not excess the website. Analysts (Forbes 2002) say that the one of the main reasons that lead to the failure of Boo.com was that they were unable to administer their finances effectively and efficiently. In just 6 months from the launch of their website the founders had spent approximately 125 million dollars to market and promote the website globally.
In conclusion, the issues around e-retail failures are largely within the control of the
retailer themselves. Careful site, information, process, procedure and customer service planning, implementation and management can avoid many of the issues so prevalent in e-retail today. Consumers are now ever more sophisticated experienced and unforgiving. It is the small stuff that ruins e-retail reputations.
www.tnl.net/blog/2000/05/19/boocom-goes-bust
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble
www.fashionmall.com/INTERNATIONALBUSINESS; Swoops In for the Boo.com Fire Sale - New York Times
http://www.obfairy.com/ - Boo! And the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History/op 10 dot-com flops - CNET.com
www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6278387-1.html
http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Article.aspx?id=1895. Retrieved on 2007-05-18
By abz
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