|
BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: DAILY BRIEFING | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
|
BW ONLINE DAILY BRIEFING |
 | |
 | |
 |
||||||
How to Get Web Sites Shop-Shape Give users predictability, and make going online as much fun as going to the mall, says a retail guru Paco Underhill was not only born to shop, he's also lucky enough to get paid for doing it. As one of the world's few retail anthropologists, Underhill and his team of researchers track as many as 70,000 consumers a year in malls, boutiques, and department stores, recording their every move through videotape and direct observation. In his new book, Why We Buy, Underhill explains the intricacies of consumer behavior, including such things as why women won't linger to shop in narrow aisles, how men are easier pushovers for children, and why close to 90% of all new grocery products fail. In this interview with BusinessWeek Online reporter Stefani Eads, Underhill talks about how the Internet will transform the world of shopping but why it will never replace the mall. Until design and operating standards are established and sites start incorporating an element of fun, he says, e-commerce will continue to be stuck in the "shopping stone age." He reminds us that shopping is, after all, only a means to an end, and that the best e-retailers will be those that build the best tools. Here's an edited version of that conversation. Q: What are the differences between shopping online and shopping offline, apart from the obvious ones? A: An e-commerce site has no logical entry point. Every place is an exit. Unlike the world of bricks and mortar, there is no established protocol for displaying products, explaining products, or pricing products. Nor is there an established way of getting me out the door once I’ve decided to buy something. The transaction process from site to site is different. Therefore, one of the challenges that e-commerce faces, in effect, is plugging the leaks -- and there are a lot of them. I've even gone to familiar sites, sites where I've bought things before, and somehow in my process of shopping, I've bailed. Q: What are you finding to be the most common challenges facing dot.coms this year, and what are your suggestions? A: Well first of all, the future of e-commerce lies in the [customer's] perception that [shopping on the Web] is truly a more effective way of buying. And to that end, it needs to be simple. It needs to be direct, and it has only one chance to be successful. For example, I recently bought a car over the Web, and I'd never do it again. Q: Why? A: Nothing worked out as planned. I went on the Web and negotiated the lowest price, and then went to a dealer that was 40 miles away. But buying a car isn't just handing over a check and driving away with something. It's getting registration plates, a title, and a bunch of other stuff too. I ended up having to make two more trips to the dealer, and I can't tell you how many more calls. If I'd bought it from the dealer around the corner from me, I probably would have paid more initially. But ultimately, it would have cost less. Q: What should e-tailers be doing to get customers to come to their sites and then actually buy something? A: I see the Web as something that allows us to get back even closer to our original shopping roots. Remember that retail follows housing. What if somebody organized a farmer's market that came into a neighborhood twice a week and you could sign up for a delivery service where you'd drop off a list when the market opened on Wednesday and pick up your order on Saturday? The Web could work in much this same way. Take the Gap, for example. I found a pair of jeans that fit me really well, but the store only had them in one size or in one color. I went on the Web, ordered two more pairs, and they sent them to the store. I went there, tried them on to make sure that they fit the same way the others did, and I was happy. That's great synergy. Q: How important do you think branding is when it comes to e-commerce? A: Branding is one of the great creations of the 20th century. And while it works, it doesn't work anywhere near as well as it used to. Brand perception [in the offline world] often gets dropped at the front door. Our experience of brand, or our loyalty to brand, is only as good as our last experience with it. Q: Do think this is the same on the Web as well? A: I do know that regardless of the brand, if the customer's experience is bad, it doesn't matter what that brand image is. I mean, all of us have an incredibly high brand image of Levi's, and yet a lot of us haven't bought a pair in quite a while. Q: What about point-of-sale marketing? Is it more important on the Web than at bricks and mortar stores? A: Some 60% to 70% of what we buy in a grocery store we didn't intend to buy when we walked in. That decision was made in part by point-of-purchase devices on the floor. The Web, if anything, is trying to tap into that strength that has been used on the store floors and is trying to see if it also works [online]. Q: In other words, the Web will never completely replace bricks and mortar stores? A: We go to the market not just to acquire goods, but also for entertainment, to look at other people. Part of what made the regional shopping mall boom is that mothers were going stir crazy stuck at home. They had to go to a mall to see other people. The idea that the Web is some magic bullet to kill the retail industry is an absolute bogus concept. Q: Along with social interaction, you also mention something else in your book that consumers do offline but can't do online: touch and smell products. How much does this hurt retailing on the Web? A: For all of the things that you and I need to see, feel, touch, and smell before we buy, there's a hell of a lot that we don't.... On the other hand, my sister, who has two small children, buys everything in her kitchen over the Web -- from her fish to her meat to her Cheerios. But that will change as soon as her kids are in school because picking out the right vegetables is something that she enjoys. One of the joys of having acquired money is spending it. And one of the ways that we enjoy spending it is allowing chance to work its magic on us. Spending it over the Web -- while it's often efficient -- isn't often pleasurable. Q: So how can Web-based retailers make shopping more fun? A: I love some of the new conceptual dressing rooms at Land's End and J.Crew, where you can adjust your body or mix and match clothing. I'm just wondering whether that works the third or the fourth time somebody shops. It's neat the first time, but you have to consider how fast it will take Web site [trends] to get stale. Q: So when an online retailer comes to you and asks how it can get more of its customers to buy more, what do you tell it? A: Ultimately I ask them to look at what the nature of their business is -- to focus on what their communication strategy is and to start plugging holes. They need to ask themselves: “How am I losing business today?” Q: Where are you seeing the biggest holes? A: The first is with transaction issues. Q: Abandoning the shopping cart before a purchase is actually made? A: Correct. The second is visual acuity problems. If I go to a Web site and have to strain my eyes to read something, I'm gone. The third issue is looking at who it is that you're trying to drive your business to. We've been working with a Silicon Valley-based company, for example, that's focused on teens, and they've come up with a great idea for organizing credit so teens can buy over the Web. Yet the [vendors] where teens can go and use the system are really lame-o. There are so many ways in which the Web has done a very effective job of shooting itself in the foot. And, I personally am looking for a marginal [shopping] season for the Web this year. Yes, there are more people shopping and there are more transactions going on, but the level of customer frustration [will also be high]. Q: So you think we'll see some fallout after the holidays? A: Definitely. In fact, I hope it happens because the sooner we get some fallout, the sooner things will improve. Q: What are the cultural and psychological differences between buying offline and buying online? A: In general we are watching a medium that is still in major evolutionary change.... The Web is still not in a position to be all things to all people, whereas, virtually everybody walks in and shops at Wal-Mart. Second, we are a culture that's very much involved with instant gratification, particularly kids. Try to get an eight year old shopping for a gift on the Web and then explain to them that once they've picked it out, they have to wait a week to get it. Q: Why do shoppers abandon their shopping carts on the Web? A: I think the Web desperately needs a set of standards. Q: What kind of standards? A: Whether it's a standard shopping cart or a standard transactional process or a standard way of negotiating. It's something that gives an e-commerce site a degree of predictability -- a framework to function within. Q: So you're not a big fan of auctions, then? A: I'm not talking about predictability in terms of transactions, I'm talking about predictability in terms of structure. This doesn't mean that eBay doesn't work, what it means is that if you're a person just coming to eBay, you'll have an idea of how [the site] works and won't have a lot of trial and error. Q: But how can you know how a site works without the trial and error of using it in the first place? A: When the Web generates a sense of design vocabulary, rather than its free-form existence now. Q: Women are supposed to be the demographic to target online this holiday season. What's the trick to getting them to buy on the Web? A: Women are already buying on the Web. They're generally the people who take technology from concept to appliance status. For example, they were the first to use the ATM and use it correctly in terms of figuring out what it could do for them and how it could make their lives easier. Men go to a hardware store and buy drills. Women go to a hardware store and buy holes. They're less interested in how they get there as what the results are, whereas, men tend to be more fascinated with the doing. Q: What's the most significant piece of advice you could give an e-retailer this holiday season? A: Make it right at whatever cost. Ultimately, what matters here is that there are a lot of people that are going to be using e-stores for the first time, and either their first transaction is successful at whatever cost, or a lot of those stores are going to be out of business. Eads is a staff reporter at Business Week Online who writes extensively about e-commerce _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
| |
 | |
 Assistive Technology barker.online Byte of the Apple Eye on Japan Hers.online Inside Wall Street Not-So-Neutral Corner Online Asia Power Lunch Privacy Matters Sector Scope Sound Money Street Wise Washington Watch News Flash Archive | ||||||
