| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 13, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BUSINESS WEEK E.BIZ -- DIGITAL DISPATCH
A Case of Internet Itch I find myself expecting online speed while offline. And I miss my mouse I've had a long day in front of the computer, and then I find myself in the car, driving along. I see a dry cleaner. I wonder: How late are they open? But I'm in the wrong lane and I don't want to pull over. Then it happens. My mouse hand starts to rise up. My forefinger twitches. I look at the sign on the front of the store and I think: Is it clickable? Can I just call up the price list? Of course not. The windshield is a not a computer screen. eWoe is me. I've got Internet Impatience. I've been spending way too much time lately surfing and clicking, hyperlinking and hyperventilating. My subconscious mind is adopting a browser's-eye view of the world. Zooming through cyberspace has left me feeling at once irrationally empowered but also mired in virtual tar pits craving ever more speed. Experts say that I am not alone. ''The Web has a driven feel to it because your hand is on the mouse. You never take it off,'' explains Jakob Nielsen, one of the Web's most seasoned designers and head of Silicon Valley's Nielsen Norman Group. He says the level of engagement during a Web surfer's information foraging is so intense, it also ''drives impatience back into the real world.'' You can say that again. That annoying teenager won't let me merge. ''Click past 'em,'' my browser-enabled instincts hiss. I make a wrong turn. ''Hit the back button!'' my neural navigator nags. ''Just go back and do it right this time.'' I feel as if the Web has trained me to expect ever-escalating--and frankly irrational--levels of responsiveness from all kinds of interactions both on- and offline. A puzzling corollary to wishing I could click on your waiter to get the check is that when a Web page can't complete a transaction as fast I want it to, I sometimes give up in disgust and actually spend orders of magnitude in time doing things the old way. For example, if a Web page won't give me a phone number I seek in seconds, I leap up and spend several minutes finding where I put the Yellow Pages and then pawing through them. Change often triggers the anxiety and illogical responses that shrinks dub cognitive dissonance. And there's no question the Internet has sparked incredible change. When I worked as a magazine reporter in New York in the early 1980s, we would request background help from the research department, and a crabby person pushing a cart would show up a day or two later and hand us an overstuffed file folder full of yellowed newspaper clippings, scribbles on napkins, phone numbers with no names attached, and other random bits of information. With a couple of keystrokes and less than a minute, I can now summon more background material on most subjects I write about than I can possibly read in a day. Yet it's not enough. I scowl at my screen and mutter, ''come on, come on!'' while it loads. If Yahoo! dares serve up a few off-point links on my research topic, in addition to 20 good ones, I behave as if United Air Lines is insisting I stop in Omaha on my way to Anchorage from San Francisco. I cybersneer: ''Don't waste my time with this junk.'' The upshot of all this is not just more deposits to society's aggravation account. As Big Red gallops toward us, bells jingling, there's growing evidence that Internet Impatience is giving Santa's virtual elves fits. Depending on whose statistics you use, anywhere from two-thirds to 75% of all folks who begin to order something online drop out of the process. The marketing folks have a tragic-sounding name for this: the abandonment rate. ''Millions of dollars in sales are lost because online merchants lack a core knowledge of what happens at the point of purchase,'' says Farhad Mohit, chief executive of BizRate.com, which does research on e-commerce. Well, here's a little core knowledge. I know lots of things can derail a transaction--hidden shipping charges, ringing doorbells, Windows crashes. But here's what makes me check out of an online order: those multiple screen steps some sites use that are the e-commerce equivalent of making you run through a tire obstacle, climb a rope ladder, and push a tackling dummy for the simple honor of sending them money. Example: I type name, address, phone number, order. Then a new screen appears asking a single question like: ''Should we send this to the same address above?'' I'm annoyed my only options are ''yes'' or ''no,'' because I'm dying to check a box called: ''Obviously.'' It's not a dumb question, but why does it need its own screen? The next screen finally appears: Are you sure your order is correct? Would you like to go back and check it? ''NO,'' I would not. I hit ''no.'' It pops me back anyway with a stern red written warning: ''We must have your dog's neck size to ensure proper fit on this Fideaux sweater.'' Ah, the old gotcha. You knew I made a mistake and were just testing me, I think. I begrudgingly give it up. ''Please do not use the symbol '#' in the form,'' the next screen nags. That's it. I'm outta here. ''Cancel,'' I click, breaking a fingernail in disgust. ''The Web is so engaging that even a few seconds of waiting feel obnoxious,'' says Nielsen, who believes most e-commerce Web sites waste all kinds of money and energy on tricky little graphics and overly complex registration procedures when the single biggest favor they could do themselves is simply to make it all work faster. Agrees Preston Gralla, author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Shopping: ''When you're at your computer, it's not the time elapsed, it's the perception of time elapsed'' that makes shoppers angry. Case in point: A recent study by Keynote Systems Inc., San Mateo (Calif.) Web performance consultants, revealed the not exactly explosive data that the time to access most e-commerce sites from work is less than five seconds, while it takes almost 20 seconds from the average home with a 56K modem. Fact is, we're still only talking about seconds here. But it's also true that your ability to shop online is four times slower when you fire up your home computer than it has been at work all day. ''They've taken something away from you,'' your subconscious heckles you. ''Be annoyed. Be very, very annoyed.'' It's the online equivalent of that dopey stumble many of us take at the airport when the moving walkway stops: You know it's going to happen, but it's hard to adjust. Please, oh please, don't take my speed away. When I bail out of an online order, sometimes I go to my car, drive for half an hour, fight for a parking spot, crawl all over a superstore, find the item (well, not exactly the one I want, but one that's fairly close and can be modified with duct tape), stand in line for 10 minutes, finally buy the thing, and drive home. I show the bag to my computer. ''See, I got it and I didn't need you. Neener neener ha ha.'' Fact is, even at the slow-feeling pace, I could have ordered the thing in less time online. This is very wrong. I know this. But here is the final indignity, the nadir of all this Internet Impatience: I'm in line at the video store. I'm fighting a horrible urge to click on the person in the blue vest, in hopes an online checkout form will appear. I fantasize about bypassing the ritual of the new employee not knowing how to use the bar code gun and needing help from the assistant manager, who absolutely positively must refile the seventh video in a Great Battleship documentary series before she helps move the two dozen fuming customers in line. Yet in my heart, I know: If an online ordering form appeared, it wouldn't be fast enough, and it would annoy me and I'd want to storm off. In the words of a sobbing Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman (a video I'm reminded of because I have been standing in line for 10 minutes, looking at it in the used/for-sale bin), if I want to watch a movie tonight: ''I got nowhere else to go!'' In other words: Damned if you click, damned if you don't. As for me, with Christmas so near, all I can do is switch to decaf and click--I mean, hope--for the best. Questions? Comments? E-mail Dispatch@businessweek.com or fax (650) 372-3970 By JOAN O'C. HAMILTON, joan_hamilton@ebiz.businessweek.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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