Online Shopping Without Satisfaction

Welcome to the season of retail contradiction. After a Cyber Monday that made online sales history—we’re talking $1.25 billion based on comScore figures—comes a new survey Wednesday from ForeSee that says shoppers are getting less satisfied with the online shopping experience.

Browser satisfaction this Cyber Monday was 72.7 on the study’s 100-point scale, below what it was over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend (73.3), a bit below last year's Cyber Monday (73.1), and notably lower than it was on Cyber Monday in 2008 (75.9), the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based analytics firm ForeSee reported.

So what's going on? Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee, suggests that the decline, though small, is reason for retailers to pay attention. Many might have shopped and made purchases, but what about the disgruntled ones that got away?

“Browsers overall are somewhat less satisfied this year because more shoppers couldn’t find what they were looking for, experienced site performance issues, or were dissatisfied with prices,” Freed said in the survey release.

Of the 159 retail websites in the ForeSee benchmark, just 40 (about 25 percent) received what Foresee considers an excellent grade of 80 or higher. Last year, a third of all retailers in the benchmark scored above 80. The study suggests that “as customer expectations increase, some retailers are finding it harder to keep up,” the study says.

Still apparel, accessories, and shoes ranked highest in the survey (shoes were the leader at 78.2 points), while websites selling computers, electronics, and mobile-phone accessories were providing the least satisfying experience, the study showed.

Ayesha Mathews-Wadhwa, founder and creative director of San Francisco-based digital design agency PixInk, says that it is no surprise that browsers, the online equivalent of window shoppers, were not completely satisfied over the holiday weekend.

“For the large part, online retail has almost none of the 'sensory seduction' that real world retail does— few ecommerce brands understand how to embed persuasion triggers for Web visitors that encourage them to browse, linger and interact with product the way they can in an actual store,” she told Portfolio.com. “Consumers— women in particular— don't 'buy,' they shop. The joy of window shopping, getting help finding a particular size or the thrill of a deal falls flat with the current holiday e-tail experience.”

Her recent column on the issue includes a few tips as follows:

There are three persuasive design tools that are especially effective in triggering consumers sensually: Firstly, designs that incorporates social-media tools to persuade consumers to evangelize reap the benefits of exposure to multiple networks. Secondly, design that illustrates scarcity, such as time tickers and inventory data, is effective in consumer persuasion. For instance, Groupon uses a timer and publishes the number of purchases. These techniques translate a sense of urgency and help consumers feel more comfortable in reaching a buying decision since others "have done it."

This is especially important for relatively unknown or new online retailers, which may cause consumers to be skeptical at the point of sale. Thirdly, testimonials persuade consumers to buy by establishing brand authority through the use of real-world, narrative examples of customer satisfaction. This is particularly effective in targeting women consumers, who account for some 83 percent of all consumer spending.

So how about some testimonials for hardware or home-improvement stuff, which scored 67.5 on the survey? Or maybe some timed deals on online phones and mobile accessory stores, which ranked lowest, at 61.4 percent? They've got to do something about those abandoned online shopping carts.

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Teresa Novellino writes for Portfolio.com