Consumer E-Commerce Needs More Customer Focus; Experienced Shoppers Find Products But Also Frustrations.

Business Editors

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 28, 1999

A group of experienced online shoppers found that while more than 90% of the time, purchasing processes were smooth, the remaining share provided enough annoyance to spur abandonment of the purchase.

The Software & Information Industry Association released these results today in a survey of e-commerce site usability in the holiday shopping period.

Since these shoppers were fairly sophisticated Web users - 70% shop online at least once a month -- they were good judges of a site's ability to answer customer questions. One area where problems surfaced was in the ability to find further information on products and services offered. Seventeen percent of respondents had a question about products or services while shopping. While three-quarters of them were able to find a FAQ, nearly 20% of those with questions were never able to resolve their problems using the site.

Even as sites expand their ability to respond to questions, users come to expect that level of performance and are only impressed by newer and superior offerings. It is now easy to search for a specific product on most sites - 41% of respondents were `extremely satisfied' with search ease. However, satisfaction decreases as the need increases. Only 20% were `extremely satisfied' with sites' ease of product browsing, and not one person rated sites' gift-giving suggestions that highly.

Consumer convenience is often cited as one of the main drivers of e-commerce. Given the digital tools that are available to improve and enhance customers' experience, some of the problems encountered were surprising, and barriers to one-stop shopping remain altogether too common. Problems included inability to time delivery of perishable items to recipients, inability to order delivery to another address (there's a barrier to gift-giving) and an early season return issue -- a major national department store was willing to accept a return to the store of an electronic purchase, but the clerks had no idea how to actually complete the transaction. Another nationally-known mail-order house did not provide either shipping information or in-stock status for Web orders, leading to a continuing struggle to cancel an order that never arrived. The most egregious example was a very well-know electronics site where the user could not find the check-out - talk about leaving money on the table!

"The software industry provides a myriad of tools that can ease consumers' path in e-commerce" said Ken Wasch, SIIA president. "For example, natural language search engines, customer service knowledge bases, and order fulfillment software all have the potential to allow sites to exceed customers' expectations if used to their fullest extent."

Unlike some other surveys this season, shoppers were not assigned to sites but recorded their experiences as they performed actual personal shopping. Half knew the exact item they wished to purchase when they went to a site and were asked about their ability to find and verify the correct product as well as price comparisons. These shoppers, in general, look to e-commerce as a full substitute for physical shopping. Thirty-seven percent knew the general category of product they wished to purchase (e.g. woman's sweater, software, toys) but needed to explore the options when on the site. They were asked about ease of browsing and navigation. Only 12% went shopping without a clue. They were simply searching for suggestions about possibly appropriate gift items, and were asked whether they were able to find a gift.

An intercept study by Active Research showed that of all online shoppers, only 12% directly proceeded to a `retail' site rather than a portal or comparison site. In a possible blow to the future of shopping portals as consumers become more comfortable shopping online, fewer than 15% of SIIA's respondents reached their site through a shopping portal, link from another site, or search engine, while nearly half relied on a previous visit or bookmark, and 20% accessed through offline advertising references.

The Software & Information Industry Association provides the tools to power the digital economy. SIIA is the principal trade association of the software code and information content industry. SIIA represents more than 1,400 leading high-tech companies that develop and market software and digital content for education, business, consumers and the Internet. For more information, visit SIIA's Web site at www.siia.net.