Slashdot Mirror
Study Says 25% of Online Transactions Go Wrong
TheKodiak writes "According to this article in the Dallas Morning News, a study by Andersen Consulting, one fourth of all online transactions fail..." The story's a little vague; at one point it claims 25% of all online purchases have some sort of problem, at another it says, "More than 25 percent of the [tested] sites were blocked, crashed during the transaction or under construction." Maybe it's best that you read and intepret this for yourself. It left me puzzled.
greetings
Cyberstar
Most of the problems listed in the article have NOTHING to do with the websites, but mostly with the delivery; things being smashed, late, etc.
As for things being late...wouldn't that be EXPECTED around the holidays? Even Xmas cards can take weeks!
It will be interesting to see which sites were "tested" and exactly what problems occured...like if they counted user problems, like information not being correctly entered
-growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional
I've been doing online purchasing since 1997 and had about a 75% success rate. The problems ranged from getting the wrong product shipped torunning out of stock. The understocking was unique to their web site because they didn't update the database.
The real problem with online shopping is all the middlemen that have inserted themselves into the clickstream between buyer and vendor to skim the top off e-commerce. Claiming to provide valuable services for the vendors, such as demographics, fancy web design, and first choice on the broker-owned portal search engine (for an extra fee), all they really provide is poor quality web forms, out of date listings, and lost orders.
I as a client don't need any of the services they are providing to the vendor. In fact, I may even object to the fact that they are collecting demographics and I certainly object to the way that various portals reorder their search results according to the vendors they have on special that day (AltaVista and Yahoo are both guilty here -- I use only Google now).
I don't live in the US, and I have been faced with stupid web forms put up by these para-sites that let you choose any country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and then require a State and 5 digit zip code (postal codes in Japan are 7 digits, and there are no States) or they'll refuse to process your order (* required field).
These sites are often out of date. This has bitten me twice this year, once severely (a hotel refused to honor a reservation because the price on the agent's web page was out of date). And I had a toy company email me 3 days after I submitted a form to tell me they were out of stock.
Another hotel never got my reservation (the agent was supposed to FAX it to them!).
I have no sympathy for vendors that can't write their own web pages. Only a year or two ago, before all these portal sites crawled out of the ether, buying on-line was just like the normal mail-order catalog model of buying. Now it's a maze of bad code and bad service, and I for one now refuse to shop at any company that can't take the time to update their own web pages, and I don't use portal sites that get paid to order their search results.
Read this one carefully. The headline states that 25% of online transactions go bad, but the study doesn't show anything like that. The study shows that if you take 100 eCommerce sites (at random?), you'll have problems with a lot of them.
No surprise there, but 80-90% of online transactions probably occur at the top 50 or so sites right now. The fact that some random retailer's site still says "Under construction" doesn't mean that lots of people are getting failed transactions, it means that their online dollar is going elsewhere until that vendor get its act together.
They're ignoring delivery issues, so it looks like the main thing they're pointing out is that lots of retail outlets don't really have professional web sites yet. This is news?
Order a book from fatbrain. Now try to order a book from www.somerandomcompany.com. Did one fail? Does that mean that 50% of online transactions fail?
Personally, the fact that ridiculously conceived studies like this actually make news really annoys me.
Many of the same things can go wrong with the orders there and yet I'd bet that nobody would think to somehow "blame" the telephone. Because there is a computer involved this becomes news.
I personally have ordered many goods and services over the internet both from the UK where I live and the USA and have never had any serious problems at all. On a related topic I use a new internet bank and I have had a few problems with their systems. When I've contacted them they have all been sorted out efficiently though. The real issue is how many online 'transactions' fail and can't easily be resolved.
Sig is taking a break!
My friend at Anderson Consulting makes money for his employers setting up internet shopping sites. I think this might just be a well crafted piece of marketing. I do not reflect on the accuracy of the study, merely the conclusions drawn.
Rupert.
No. The story has nothing to do with Dallas, it's an Andersen study after all, and the original byline is New York.
Now it could be that Dallas is playing it up a bit because of their mayor (probably true, since it's not much of a study), but that's another thing.
I must say, this really makes me wonder, because I have been shopping online for more tha a year (I would guess that i have bought more than 25 items online) and I have NEVER had an experience where i received the wrong goods, or anything like this (thats not entirely true, i've had one incident, but the vendor was not to blame, the problems there were caused entirely by the shipping company, and in fact, the vendor was extremely fast to remedy the situation)
And, I have bought not only from major vendors, but from all kinds, both in the US, UK, Germany, Denmark and the far east.
So, all in all, no bad experiences for me, and a 100% succes ratio.
I usually email them about this, and I usually get a reply saying "We know there's a world outside the U.S., honest! In fact, we know all about the Global Economy and will be shipping internationally in just x weeks!".
But I wasn't complaining that they weren't prepared to do business with me. I was complaining that they didn't say so in bigass blinking neon letters at the top of the order form!
Hopefully I've learned by now to check first, but sometimes that isn't even possible due to the way some sites split up their order forms.
Another thing: Why does the typical order form have separate fields for "Address 1", "Address 2", "Address 3", "City", "State/Region", "ZIP/Postal Code", and "Country"? Why can't it just give me a text box labelled "mailing address"? The people who wrote the software that will feed this information to the printer have no idea how to format a mailing address in my country. My country doesn't have states, it is a state, and we don't divide it into regions. So what am I supposed to put in that field? I try to leave it empty, but often the scripts will complain and I'll have to put "N/A", which the scripts will proceed to print on my package between the city and country lines.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
yeah yeah - with all the 'new media' outlets and the old media scrapping for market share of eyeballs they are really cranking up the bullcrap factor - just like the number of dead in Venezuala, just pick a number bigger than your competing network ("50,000 dead" - now that ought to sell papers and get the ratings back up, jeez) and hang onto your liability disclaimer ("this news report is for entertainment purposes only, we are not responsible for the accuracy of any content, we're just passing on whatever juicy gossip we hear").
I've been making deals over the Internet for about 2 years and maybe I'm just careful but of all the eBay stuff (a Bandai FriskyTom! Gimme gimme!!) and cheapbyte CD's and about 10 books from Book Exchange and deal arranged on mailing lists - maybe *2* have gone wrong: one was an Error 404 on tigerdirect.com last xmas trying to buy a Lego Mindstorm (ok, so just drive the 5 miles to ToysR'us) and once a guys sent me the wrong signal generator - that's IT. I'm actually amazed at the integrity of the people I've delt with considering the opportunity for wire fraud.
Boojum
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I did about 90% of my christmas shopping online this year. From site amazon.com to the obscure paragongifts.com. The only bad experience was when I ordered a book from bn.com then realized it was backordered. I had a little trouble canceling it, but nonetheless it was canceled by the next day. I didn't get a tracking number from all the vendors, but the ones I did get, the shipping companies gave pretty good timeframes for shipping. I really don't see where AC gets all their 'statistics' and after the cnn article and this back to back, I think we need to urge the media to be more responsible, if you don't understand it, don't try to report on it. Mabye they can all learn a little fron Jane's.
I personally have worked with Anderson Consulting on several occassions, and I have to say that my experiences are not good.
They somehow manage to get contracts in many fields, including technology, but are rarely skilled in those areas (even the people who work specifically in technology).
Granted, they are normally smart people, but you can't commission people to do work on the premise that they will pick it up as they go along, they should know the stuff at the start, this is apparently why large corporations pay around $2000 a day for anything over a junior consultant.
In a similar way, can we really listen to their reports on eCommerce? Surprising isn't it that 25% of transactions fail!? If I was sceptical I would say that this is very similar to the tried and tested Anderson trick of convincing people that something is wrong when it isn't really, and then also managing to persuade people to pay them to write a full report on the subject, and then pay them more to fix it. I myself buy all books online, electronic products, flights, etc and have never had a problem. Maybe Anderson thought that a representative sample might contain several jackassforless.com sites run by 1 person out to make a quick buck, but then, do they really know any better?
With all these problems in the world of eCommerce its refreshing to know that we have AC getting to the root of the problem - I bet they are just the people the fix it for us.
Compare that to, say, Victoria's Secret where I was also shopping. When I selected the detail for items, not only did it say "This item will ship on XX date", if the item was out, it offered recommendations for similar items. I was quite impressed with that engine. Of course, after I ordered something I got a card in the mail saying "This item cannot be shipped on the expected date." D'oh. (But it still showed up!)
I ordered something from thinkgeek once pretty much as it was being slashdotted. Right at the final click to submit my order the site seemed to go down. What to do, what to do? You never resubmit, everybody knows that. Don't wanna get charged twice! So, I let the first one stand and then emailed them the timestamp (roughly) and what I'd ordered as a way of alerting them to my dilemma. I didn't hear back via email, but my package did arrive within a few days (if anything, it was even earlier than I would have expected). So whatever they're doing over there, it's pretty robust in my eyes.
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
OK, this is just stupid. I'm a little touchy about these studies, because I build e-commerce networks for money. I also ordered all of my christmas presents and shipped them on-line this year, and constantly buy everything I can over the Internet.
... in fact, I have bought more faulty hardware from a physical store than I have from online merchants. Previous posters are likely correct ... FUD for e-business managers, and a way to generate more consulting hours for Anderson.
This Christmas season, I did all my shopping last week. All of my items were delivered, on time. I got confirmation e-mails when my order was processed, and when it was shipped. (Granted, with overnight shipping, some sites didn't inform me of shipping status until the product was already there, but I won't bitch about that.) Staples managed to send me 2 of an item I ordered, but took care of it in a prompt, professional manner.
All of the web sites I ordered off of told me whether or not an item I was looking at was in stock. None of them didn't know what was in stock or took a week to find out what was in stock. Maybe that's the way it works on www.shadyecommerce.com, but I experienced no such problems.
Granted, there are glitches. I have been double-billed, both by catalogs and web sites. The only difference between the two is that on a web site, a polite email gets my card reimbursed, and I never have to wait on hold for someone.
I have had items destroyed in shipping, (a copy of freeBSD, in fact) and a polite email was enough to insure that the replacement was delivered overnight.
I have had items run out of stock. I knew the next day, and had no problem modifying my order.
If that record, over 3 years of impulsive internet shopping, turns into a 25% failure rate, than Anderson counts differently than me. Anderson seems to forget that catalog orders and in-store purchases fail too
good. fast. cheap. (pick any two, you can't have all three)
They did have some broad criteria for failure. I wonder what a similar study in brick-and-mortar would turn up. How many such transactions fail because you get there after closing time, they don't have the particular Furby you want, or the shopper gets a flat tire on the way to the mall?
--The basis of all love is respect
Then, there was Fox Store's hiccup. They had all their Doctor Who and Blackadder videos marked at around $1.50 each, by accident. This is certainly a transaction gone wrong, from Fox' perspective, but hardly from mine. My perspective said that this was one of the best transactions I've ever done online!
So, the question should be passed back to this study - from who's perspective? Without that, the study is meaningless, even if the figures have any validity in the first place.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This article is nothing but an attemt at marketing the "new philosophy" at Andersen Consulting. (You see, there is a reason I'm posting this as "Anonymous Coward") Ever since the managing partner George Shaheen left to CEO Webvan, the new leadership has been trying to re-invent itself as an 'e-commerce' consulting firm. If you look at the AC website, you'll get an overview of 'what e-commerce means' to the AC higher-ups. This attempt to transform the company is reaching down to the lower (analyst) levels as well, as a new training program is being implemented. Most of this sounds well and good in theory, but is remarkably dangerous to any firm trying to get on to the web for a couple of reasons: 1) The AC philosophy is to hire cheap labor (i.e. those liberal arts majors who have never even *touched* a computer, much less learned to program). This cheap labor is put through exceptionally shoddy training (i.e. "learn to program in 21 days" type of stuff) and then forced into the real world to apply those skills. I've seen so many bad practices, and shoddy programming being excused as "it's OK if it works". Without skilled employees, the company relies on the occasional skilled person to provide creativity and direction. 2) With a small handful of people driving the creative process, AC tends to arrive at "the solution". Clients sign on thinking that AC is generating unique, creative solutions to thier particular situation. The truth is, the "solution" arrived at on another client site is often repeated verbatim. (Measure twice, cut once, then paste, paste, paste). 3) The partnership of AC consists soley of old accountants. 'E-business" (and yours) is simply another cash cow for exploitation. The partnership has been pretty blunt about this. To these '25%' looking to improve your business: - Look to people who know your industry or particular needs inside and out. There are more talented people willing to work for less than the $250/hr. that AC charges for analysts. Don't snub smaller consulting firms for the slick brochures and big-money dinners. - Make sure your consulting firm has talented, creative people working for them. Someday, you will be responsible for maintaining the code the consultant puts out. AC makes money by 'partnering' (i.e. turning out such a shoddy product that *no one* can maintain it.) - Don't buy into anyones preconcieved notions of 'e-commerce', or any other buzzword. If you are spending $$$ to improve or add new business, and not getting a return on that investment, you're wasting your money. Face it, 'big five' consulting firms exist soley as a money transfer device. (Read the book 'Dangerous Company' to clear your head of any forced or preconcieved notions...)
I bought from 3 different oneline stores. All three screwed the order up completely. One never sent a confirmation email, and it took 3 emails and one phone call to finally get a confirmation of my order, which appeared on my answering machine.
Another one sent 3 different messages saying that the order had gone through, hadn't gone through and had been rejected. I finally called customer support and was told they had no record of the order. I ordered over the phone.
The third was Amazon, I ordered a 3-pack of MST movies with Manos. They sent three different movies, no Manos. I sent them several emails telling them what had gone wrong, so they sent me another package. It was the same 3 wrong movies. I sent them another email, which resulted in them asking me to return everything, since they don't really stock the stuff I'd ordered, and they had already credited my credit card. No "How would you like to handle this," no "Would you like to keep these movies instead," nothing.
Still, I've done my shopping from the office at lunch and everything was delivered there. Despite the hassle, it was still better than doing the Road Warrior thing in the parking lot at the mall.
``Business-to-business Internet marketplaces are becoming the next red-hot E-commerce market. A flurry of year-end, big-ticket deals last week shows that major players such as Andersen Consulting, Ariba, and SAP are banking on huge volumes of business transactions moving to the Web next year.''
Think this report may be just a tad biased?
Nah, couldn't be.
Make affiliate bucks
I work for a small retail store that has had an online presense for about a year. I would say that about 10% of my job goes to filling online orders.
I have easily seen 25% of online orders fail. Why? Declined credit cards. I realize this is not what the article is talking about, but not a day goes by that we do not get a bum credit card number.
The site I work for does not do online inventory because it is simply too expensive right now (we are not even running a POS system at the store, so putting inventory online would require doing that and inventorying everything). When we get an order that specifies somehting we do not have, we:
a) immediately place an order for the product. No sense in not having it next time.
b) call or email the person immediately to give them the choice of waiting for it to come in or alternates.
c) try to work it out with the customer. Frequently we do a "next best thing" approach where we will provide the better item for the price of the (not in stock) ordered item.
Some other problems:
a) My manager, in charge of the online site, is getting fed up with UPS. The current shipping software that they gave him does not do email confirmation. We would love to do this (I have received nice shipping confirmation notices via USP Shipping software from other companies, so we know it exists). The UPS rep that I spoke with concerning this said "Wow. That would be a cool feature." I tried to explain to him that it already exists and is working.
b) UPS and FedEx are not guaranteeing shipping this season. We, as a site, cannot say when your package will get to you because USP will not assure us of a date. We can make sure your order goes out the day you place it, but that does not mean anything if it gets hung up at the UPS processing center for two days.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman