Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

It's still amazing to see online retailers still not getting the importance of customer experience.

What the “2007 Retail Customer Experience Study” by Future Now found was online retailers were placing far too much emphasis on innovation, while neglecting the far more important aspect of the experience the consumer is having while interacting with their website.

In another extraordinary discovery, people are returning to physical stores to get a more satisfying experience. Who'd a thought this would happen when the Internet offered such ease of use? At least in theory it does; the reality is obviously different.

In an April 2006 study by Forrester, they also found that a huge 74 percent of people weren't satisfied with the shopping experience they had online.

It's the same today also, as online conversion rates, according to Shop.org, have stayed around 2.5 percent, reflecting the dissatisfaction by consumers with online retail.

Sam Decker, CMO of Bazaarvoice identifies the problem accurately, saying, “According to customers, what were once ecommerce nice-to-haves are now table stakes. Easy checkout, product search and the right policies are as important as multi-channel integration and authentic user-generated content, such as ratings and reviews. The way customers research, shop and buy has evolved. Future Now’s study underscores the need for retailers to do the same and reconsider priorities.”

The thing to learn here is not to make a god out of innovation, as some have. Innovation is an obvious ingredient to success in business, but innovation at the expense of the consumer is worthless.

As far as online sales go, it's better to do the basics right than anything else. Build innovation on that and you'll be much more successful.

This is a problem for all online marketers, as the experience is socializing people into thinking of Internet service as secondary to physical outlets. That's not good news for the industry.

Some of the highlights from the study:

* 58% offer gift certificates.
* 24% do not allow customers to enlarge the product image.
* 37% offer multiple image views of products.
* 33% offer customer reviews.
* 38% of sites have difficult to read fonts. (This is especially telling considering that, this year, our average age of reviewer was younger than ever before. Only 14% allow customers to change the default font size while viewing their website.)
* 43% offer free shipping.
* 61% do not offer any information on the product page regarding in-stock availability
* 74% offer estimated delivery times.
* 42% provide shipping cost early in the checkout process. 35% have a checkout process with more than 4 steps.
* (Only) 58% correctly answer an e-mail question within 24 hours.
* 20% offer pay-by-check, 10% offer Google Checkout, 20% accept PayPal and 18% offer Bill Me Later.