How functional is your website?


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Ecommerce -Website Functionality

I remember when the Internet was first introduced to the public. Most were scared of it, many predicted that the public would not shop on line, and finding product, any product was hit or miss. Gone are those days.

Today, a large percentage of the population does most of their business and a good portion of their shopping on the web. Now, everybody with pair of socks to sell is launching a website. And therein lays the problem. Two scenarios that separates the merchants from the wannabees:

The first scenario is the entrepreneur who gets Publisher or Front page and tries to simulate an Ecommerce site. Most of them spend a lot of time learning how to make a nice looking site with reasonable displays of their product. Now they are ready for business. So, now they have to let the customer select some products and reserve them for themselves (a shopping cart), and then they have to be able to pay for them and get them shipped. This is where the amateur misses the Ecommerce bus. I find several of their solutions that either keep me from buying, or insure I don’t come back.

they give you an email address to send your order to after you have cut and pasted the product ID, whatever it is. Then you can mail a check.
They sign up for a hosting system that offers a build-it-yourself and a generic shopping cart. Most of these work fine, but the newly christened store owner doesn’t understand all the bells and whistles that come with it, they don’t know they need them, or they can’t make them work. So, the consumer in need of that product finds themselves wrestling to put an item in the cart, then trying to go back to browse, then (heaven help them), trying in vain to modify their order, check on it or check out.

Somewhere in the development of these sites, these do-it-yourselfers lose sight of “make it easy and a good experience for the consumer” so they want to come back. It’s kind of like shopping a clothing store, finding just what you want, but standing at the cash register for 10 minutes trying to find the clerk to ring you up. I usually don’t go back to them either. On many amateur sites I have been on lately, I could put an item in the shopping cart, but never find the cart again to either modify or check out. No links. On one of them that I absolutely had to have their product, I ended up emailing to find our how to do it. Silly me, you just add another product to the cart, then, while you are there, delete it and check out. Now why didn’t I figure that out! On another site, I finally got through the check out process, but there was no notification of shipping and no tracking system – it was pray and wait.

In both cases, I don’t go back. I end up shopping at another site that isn’t the cheapest price on even the brand I was looking for, but the ease of shopping and the feel-good when it is done brings me back. Maybe every new Ecommerce entrepreneur should have to pass a course in the “dollar store vs. J.C. Penney’s” theory. I used to berate my friends who would still go to one of the major department stores when I kept pointing out that Walmart had the same thing at 10% less. Now I understand their motive.

In my humble opinion, the second Scenario is worse, because the new entrepreneur tries to do it right. They research their product, find a supplier, test market and things look good. But the web designer they finally choose either does not understand Ecommerce or doesn’t have the tools to do it correctly. Your primary concern at this point is to hire an expert in the web design and Ecommerce field to build your store.

Continued
Ecommerce - website functionality

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Lee Siemon - author
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