Study Highlights Flaws in Online Shopping Experience

10/03/2008

A new study commissioned by Tealeaf and carried out by Harris Interactive shows that nearly 90% of those surveyed reported having trouble completing an online transaction.

What this study demonstrates clearly is that while online shopping is becoming more mainstream, shoppers are having a less than stellar experience while doing it.

Another eye-opening statistic garnered from the survey is that 41 percent of those who reported having problems said they either went to another similar site, or just gave up on the transaction altogether. What this means for Internet marketers is that competitors are just a click away – and many online shoppers are more than willing to flit there when not satisfied.

Other Online Shopping Survey Results

More than a third of those surveyed said their preference was shopping online. More than 8 out of 10 (84%) said they expected to be able to process their transaction the first time around. Perhaps as a sign of the times, almost a quarter (22 percent) said they expected an increased level of customer service when shopping online than when they shop in a store.

Piggybacking on this last point about customer service, experts warn that Internet marketers need to be more vigilant than ever about providing excellent customer service online. Why? Because shoppers tend to spread the news about their negative shopping experiences.

As an example, a full 84 percent of those surveyed admitted that they were likely to share their negative shopping experience with others. Of these, 82 percent said they would take it a step further and air their complaint in an offline channel, eg, calling a friend to tell them about it.

And, the bleeding doesn’t stop there for e-tailers when a shopper has a bad experience. There are also customers who will blog about it or leave a bad review on the retailer’s site for others to see. This is exactly the kind of information that companies don’t want to become part of their permanent online record – which it does when customers take this route.

The number one customer service pitfall Harris Interactive identified was the failure of e-tailers to integrate their offline call centers into their eCommerce platforms.

Of the roughly 50 percent of online shoppers who called a company’s call center to report a problem, 64 percent said that the customer service rep didn’t seem to know much about the online store; almost 40 percent (38%) said their issue went unresolved.

Of these shoppers, almost 75 percent (72% to be exact) said they would cut back on doing business with the company in question, or file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.

The bottom line for Internet marketers: firms must take definitive action to improve their customers’ online shopping experience, paying particular experience to customer service issues like call center integration.

For more insight visit eCommerce Development Services