Creative Good Report Predicts Online Holiday Revenues Reduced by $14 billion Poorly Performing e-Commerce Sites will Cause Major Losses

Business Wire, Oct 16, 2000

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 16, 2000

$14 billion in potential sales will be unrealized this holiday season because of poor online customer experiences, according to the The Holiday 2000 Online Shopping Report, published by Creative Good, a leading e-commerce consulting firm. The report asserts that nearly half of all e-commerce customers trying to make a holiday gift purchase will get confused and leave websites without placing an order and without contacting customer service, making the lost sales "silent."

"Remarkably, e-commerce website performance has deteriorated since last year. In 1999, 39% of shoppers failed to make a purchase and this year 43% failed," said Aamir Rehman, Creative Good analyst and author of the report. "If sites can simply make the buying experience easier, they stand to gain huge increases in revenue and a larger customer base who will return to shop after the holiday season is over." Rehman continues, "the sites that cannot convert shoppers to buyers this holiday season are likely to shut down in 2001."

To research the report, Creative Good conducted 53 consumer tests in their proprietary listening lab methodology, where the at-home shopping experience is closely simulated. The tests were conducted on eight major e-commerce sites in large holiday categories: toys, books/music, electronics and apparel.

Despite consumers' willingness to shop and buy online, many found the experience too frustrating to complete. 45% of the failures were due to checkout alone. Customers who were simply trying to pay for their gifts were foiled by the process. If e-commerce sites improve just the checkout process,they could gain an additional $6 billion this season, according to the report.

The Holiday 2000 Online Shopping Report includes Creative Good(1)s prototype of an improved BestBuy.com site to demonstrate the before-and-after results of a "customer experience makeover." In the consumer tests, Creative Good's new prototype quadrupled the conversion rate of shoppers to buyers.

The entire report is available free in electronic format (PDF) at www.creativegood.com and www.goodexperience.com.

Creative Good (www.creativegood.com) is an Internet strategy firm, based in New York and San Francisco, focused on the online customer experience. Creative Good brings its clients higher revenue, better customer retention, and improved branding by improving the customer experience on their sites and converting more shoppers to buyers. Additional information, including a free customer experience newsletter, can be found at www.goodexperience.com.