Too many websites rely on flashiness, study finds

Contrary to the accepted sales strategy of the bricks and mortar world, online stores should be selling the steak and not the sizzle, according to "Click-Here Commerce", a new study of US and European electronic commerce websites.

Far too many sites try to sell products based on the flashiness and spark of the website's technology, rather than the products themselves. At the same time, too many online shops seem stymied by the possibilities of the Web, says the report. Rather than using the technology to maximise sales, poorly-designed websites throw up barriers for consumers and inadvertently discard the company's most effective land-based selling approaches.

"Contrary to media hype, Web commerce represents a selling evolution rather than a revolution. Online stores fail to translate the lessons learned from centuries of land-based retailing and merchandising into successful online shopping experiences for consumers," says Ms Shelley Taylor, managing director of Silicon Valley and London-based Shelley Taylor and Associates and author of the study.

In the study, 50 online commerce sites selling a wide range of products in numerous categories were evaluated. The study evaluated websites according to how they compared to the traditional selling process of a real-world store.

Ms Taylor defines four steps in the real-world selling process: greeting the customer; show and tell (qualifying, presenting the product and overcoming objections); closing the sale; and customer service and support. For the virtual world, these are translated into the categories of site entry and navigation; shopping and browsing; ordering; and customer service and support.

Amongst the study's findings were the revelations that only 62 per cent of companies place a direct link to their shopping site on their home page.

Only two of 50 companies provided a reduced bandwidth or text only-option and only one site specified on the home page the minimum browser required for viewing the site. Less that a quarter provide adequate site navigation, failing to let a site visitor move easily between different sections of the site. Instead, users have to click backwards or forwards to find the needed link.

Some 24 per cent of stores offer no pre-sale assistance and an astonishing 32 per cent fail to provide purchase instructions, assuming visitors will know what to do themselves. Two-thirds of online stores offer some product specifications, but only 1 per cent provide third-party reviews and only one offered a features/benefits comparison. Only 8 per cent of sites allow users to see what items are currently held in their virtual shopping cart at all times. < ao

Ms Taylor believes that selling problems emerge on so many sites because of a breakdown in communication between the people in the boardroom, who do understand a company's products and how to effectively sell them, and the people designing the websites. She says that typically, they are young and grew up with computers and the Internet. Consequently they assume all computer users have the latest computers, Internet browsers and plug-ins - the small, add-on software applications that enable websites to offer more features.

But, as Ms Taylor points out, many Internet users have older browsers, do not understand how to add plug-ins, or are using laptops or older computers which lack the larger screens needed to fully display some websites. That leaves many consumers - especially older people who have been shown in other studies to spend most online - with neither sizzle nor steak.

According to the study, the top five e-commerce websites in terms of content and features are: (1) CDNow (www.cdnow.com); (2) Barnes and Noble (www.barnesandnoble.com); (3) BrainPlay (www.brainplay.com); (4) Lands End (www.landsend.com); (5) Blockbuster (www.blockbuster.com).

Further details of the study are available at www.infofarm.com.