Online Shopping and Gasoline Frustrations Make an Impact on Stores
The Opinion Research Corporation took an Ouch Point survey, with a sampling of 1,092 respondents. According to the survey results, 90% of those polled shop online. The most likely to make purchases are women, consumers between 25 and 44 years old, usually residents in the Northeast and also, households with annual incomes of $75K or more.However, the results also state that nearly one quarter of survey takers said that the biggest frustration about shopping online is that purchased items commonly have a different look from the image of the product on the Internet.
A number of survey takers pointed to the lack of a live chat feature with someone from customer service at an online shop. Such a live chat feature would allow consumers to address any questions they might have to an actual person, whether for info or sales. The lack of this feature makes online shops impersonal and is a top headache for a significant number of survey takers.
Among the many online shops, Amazon.com was chosen by 25% of the respondents as the company that is currently offering the best shopping experience on the Internet. About 21% of survey takers were unable to identify the best candidate.
The Global Managing Director of Customer Strategies at Opinion Research, Linda Shea, said "... there is ample opportunity to create competitive differentiation and... best practice in the online shopping space. Failing to meet customers' expectations,... from login to receipt of item... can have an adverse impact on the customer's perception of...the store (and) the brand."
All of this being said, online shops should seriously take into consideration implementing a support desk, live chat forum, or similar feature that would allow their consumers to get appropriate answers to their concerns.
More interesting information that this survey provided us with includes:
- 19% dislike it when an ecommerce web site allows a backorder of items or when it allows out of stock items to be placed on a shopping cart
- 14% are feeling frustrated by web sites that tend to malfunction while payment is being processed via the payment gateway
- 8% dislike unclear return policies that some web sites have
- 6% dislike unclear shipping information
- 6% dislike not getting any confirmation upon placing an order on a web site
According to the survey, 33 percent of U.S. adults shopping online indicated that they are more likely to purchase online than to purchase in-person at a store as a result of the high price of gasoline.
The founder and CEO of iCongo, Irwin Kramer, has a conclusion statement for the survey results: "Based on these results, it's fair to say that consumers may be looking to fire up their computer more often than their car or truck when it comes to retail shopping. One in three adults said high gas prices are making them more likely to shop online instead of in a store – a clear indication that gas prices are having an effect on shopping attitudes."
That would be one more item to think about as it is of vital importance to both online stores and regular brick and mortar stores. There is little or nothing that regular stores can do to make gasoline prices go down. On the other hand, online shops have a variety of options and features to choose from. These features include a support desk, knowledge base, forum, live chat, frequently asked questions, and other web software for the purpose of customer relations quality improvement.
For any questions you might have, please ask the Attention Interactive Los Angeles Web Design And Development team to take the fastest route to improving the quality of your customer relations or any other business goal your web site should achieve.
