November 05 2007

Nine out of ten users think your site is broken

A new survey shows that nearly 90% of British consumers conducting transactions online in the past year have experienced problems completing transactions, with 37% then abandoning the transaction altogether. Is this survey the herald of a disastrous Christmas 2007 for online retailers?

On Friday I got the regular monthly late-night e-commerce tech support call from my in-laws, “Er we’ve just hit purchase and all I get is a page saying SQL server session error, this is the third time, and it looks like I’ve bought the same thing three times, what do I do?” So it comes as no surprise to us that a survey by Harris Interactive for Tealeaf found huge levels of user disappointment with ecommerce web sites and the call centres that backed them up.

According to the survey nearly 9 out of 10 (86%) British consumers who have conducted transactions online in the past year have experienced problems completing transactions. In addition 37% of those who have experienced problems when conducting an online transaction in the last 12 months say they would abandon their transaction entirely if they experienced a problem.

Tealeaf split the dissatisfaction into two threads, those dissatisfied with the site, and those dissatisfied with the subsequent customer service. According to Tealeaf there are two waves of abandonment: 37% of visitors who have experienced problems conducting online transactions would abandon the transaction after experiencing problems; 40% would cease doing business with the company after receiving poor customer service from a company’s call centre when calling about website problems

Tealeaf make some convincing points in their sum up of the survey that should be used as a mantra fore most online retailers, Rebecca Ward, CEO, Tealeaf says

“After a decade of ecommerce, British consumers have very high expectations of their online experiences, yet many companies doing business online are still failing to deliver an acceptable level of customer experience and service to internet customers. Online businesses must pay attention to their customers' experiences and help them to succeed, or risk losing them and their business entirely. The only way to understand and pinpoint problems, improve conversion rates and better serve customers is to have visibility into everything that happens on your online channel.”

"The lack of face-to-face contact is an obvious disadvantage online, but customers must feel as though they are valued and that their issues are understood, processed and, ultimately, solved. Businesses need to pay the same consideration to the experience of each and every online customer, just as they would in a physical shop or via a call centre, and to achieve this they require a clear picture of where their websites work and where they fall short. Only then will they be able to take steps to improve the service they deliver to their online customers," said Ward.

However because of the 24/365 nature of the web there’s never going to be a 100% satisfaction with websites. The cost of staffing call centres 24 hours a day 365 days a year just makes uneconomic. The really worrying part of this survey is the high levels of dissatisfaction were recorded back in early August when websites are usually hardly being stretched. Is this an early warning shot for a disastrous winter? We’re going to interview Tealeaf over the next few days, if you have any questions you’d like answered then please email them here now.

Interestingly we in the UK seem to be slightly more tolerant to e-retail proble. Tealeaf conducted the same research in the US and instead of 37% abandonment after web problems there were 42%. The full US release can be read here.

by Marcus Austin (Web Editor)