Comments on: 5 Reasons Why Online Sales Aren’t a Bigger Share Of The Holiday Pie

By: Allen Weiss

Allen Weiss — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:05:05 +0000

Thanks all, these are really good points. It will be interesting to see if online buying gets a larger slice of the pie in the future.

By: Dave Linabury

Dave Linabury — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:37:45 +0000

“–people actually enjoy the shopping experience where finding unplanned items is the norm”
Totally agree. I would love to see Amazon adopt a shopping display GUI like Googles new Image Swirl. If you chose an item, you’d see related items in a social graph surrounding it, rather than the horrid scroller they have now that forgets items you’ve marked as read, ordered or disliked.

By: PXLated

PXLated — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:13:38 +0000

Per #3…Back in 99/2000 when I was the design director taking Best Buy online, we had that same theory so we designed a content block that would prominently display the number of items and total dollar amount on every page (no surprises). I notice they no longer show the dollar amounts – wonder what their research showed, hmmmm.

By: Charles Nicholls

Charles Nicholls — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:11:53 +0000

Hi Allen – Good post.
One of the most often cited reasons that people abandon shopping carts is that they want free shipping. This has become all the more evident in 2009, where customers have demonstrated that they are very deal focused, and this outweighs the convenience of purchasing items where they know what they want.
The highest converting websites are often ‘mission oriented’ such as flowers for your mother’s birthday (1-800Flowers) or food for the evening meal Schwan’s).
Where online shopping fails is in getting the emotional high that many seek from shopping, aka ‘Retail Therapy.’ And certainly if you had to experience products before you bought them to appreciate the purchase, and get the high, then online shopping would certainly be less relevant to many categories.
Of course there are exceptions with break all the rules: Look at shoe purchases. Zappos should, by rights not succeed as an online business according to the ‘rules.’ But Zappos is a business that offers free shipping, free (and hassle free) returns and great customer service. Online fashion retailers know that at least 30% of what is ordered will ultimately be returned, but accept this as a cost of doing business online.
I wrote a blog on ‘Why we buy, online’ (http://websiteconversion.blogspot.com/2009/08/why-we-buy-online.html) which looks at the emotional reasons for buying online. All too often we only think about the rational and ignore emotion, yet emotional buyers are much more likely to convert. It’s not until ecommerce teams embrace both customer service, good value and buyer motivations will we see wholesale migration online.

By: John Scognamiglio

John Scognamiglio — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:08:00 +0000

I think that with the upcoming generations, we’ll see more online purchasing. Security issues are being resolved, younger people, such as myself feel less a need to “experience” a good, digital natives, such as my generation find checkout to be cut and dry, we like instant gratification, but at the same time, we also like to save money, and for the most part, we know what we want to purchase. The only part that applies to me is the browsing aspect, which I rarely do. For reviews and suggestions, I usually just check Google for reviews. I can’t imagine retail lasting for more than another 40 years beyond the stuff that you can’t order online, such as your weekly groceries or emergency goods (Snow shovels for the unexpected first snow of the season, for example). A store like Radio Shack isn’t really necessary.