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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.
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.
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.
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.
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
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 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