Internet shopping (2000)
Roger Frost’s column in ‘TV Technology and Production’ from when the Internet just started to get easy
Internet shopping (July/Aug 2000)
“Shop! Hello, anyone there?” Yes, we’re shopping on the web again and looking for something in the way of life enhancement. It started many transactions ago – trying to use the web as a means of venting cash on technology, tickets and music – and finding it supremely convenient. If there’s an issue, it’s the service. They just don’t do shops so well these days.
It could have been bad luck lots of times over, but service is surprisingly erratic. Anyone would wonder how electronic systems could lose an order, send things twice, misjudge stock levels and misinform on delivery dates. A punter looking for retail therapy might soon be in need of psychotherapy.
A first stab at an answer to why E-tailing is less perfect than the ‘brick and mortar’ shopping experience comes from the growth of E-commerce: How does a business think having set up an e-shop, and discovering last year’s sales were 120% up on the previous year? Seeing the news that they were likely to double this in the year 2000, my guess is that they’d not just be overjoyed, they’d be overly complacent. And in that scenario, you let customer service slip: your competitors might be doing better but hey, there’s lots here forallofus.
A second answer is that this is just the beginning. Far from being a slick electronic shop, an e-commerce site can be little more than an enticing web site that generates orders. After that it is a regular retailing operation: orders are printed out, re-keyed into another system, stocks are checked and the delivery times guessed at – just as it was since computers took over. Near the end of the order process, someone phones up Harry to tell him to go take it round to my house.
Ovum, the independent research and consulting company looks forward to what they’re calling ‘next-generation e-commerce’. Principal consultant Neil Ward-Dutton reminds that e-commerce has some way to go: there are ways to personalise the customer’s experience and to improve the quality of service. There are also potential gains in lowering a retailer’s costs for example by linking together the discrete systems that make up their operation.
Indeed in past columns people have discussed how for example, an e-tailer could better ‘know’ its customers and proffer the products that are likely to suit. If that seems light years away, the same folk told us of much more basic mechanisms that help remove the barriers to parting with money at a shopping site. For example, it is not hard for a shop to say, ‘welcome back’, or provide specs, details, reviews and product comparisons. Failing to do that, people will continue to abandon shopping trolleys on the Internet. If thousands of trolleys are dumped half-filled daily, most of them were by me.
According to a report from Ovum (www.ovum.com) , the days of the simple e-commerce transaction are numbered. They say that if anyone is to lead in e-commerce, they will have to think ahead. This means thinking about the next-generation of e-commerce: their operation will benefit from connecting with customers, and linking into the information systems of their suppliers and partners. Currently, there’s little in the way of shrink-wrapped technology to do this: so there’s a window of advantage for those prepared to develop custom solutions.
“The fact that e-commerce presents an enormous amount of opportunity is not an earth shattering concept,” adds Ward-Dutton, “However, as e-commerce moves on beyond its first-generation, adopters are faced with new, more business-critical technology issues. Organisations need to look at their entire application infrastructure, both internal and external, and develop a technology strategy that addresses these complex applications in an integrated way.”
Ovums report is “Delivering Next-Generation E-commerce Applications: Challenges and Opportunities