Re: Justification to improve site usability
> 1). The cost of a negative web experience for a potential
> customer. How much does it cost to change a bad
> impression, that resulted from searching for a product that
> was not represented on a web site? If a potential customer
> did not find the product what would be an average cost to
> reactivate that potential customer?
I've never come across any analyses that attempt to place an actual
dollar cost -- at the single website level anyway -- on the damage
from poor website usability. A recent survey of active Internet
users conducted by Enterpulse did find that "If a Web site doesn't
meet their expectations, two-thirds say they don't return - now or
ever."
Internet.com reported on the survey about two weeks ago here:
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/traffic_patterns/article
/0,,5931_1145511,00.html
You can download a copy of an Enterpulse document that discusses
the topic here:
http://www.enterpulse.com/press/051502.html
A study from 2000 by Ernst & Young on shopping cart abandonment
found that 26% of shoppers ultimately purchased the desired item(s)
from a competitor, 17% completed the purchase offline, and 39%
decided to not purchase the item(s) at all. Only 18% went back and
purchased from the original site at a later date. I see no reason
to believe that these numbers would have changed since that time in
a direction that is *less* problematic for poorly designed sites.
--
Jeffrey Bennett
Intermarket Group
jeff(at)intermarketgroup.com
Got Data? The Internet Commerce Briefing, Ed. 3.0
www.intermarketgroup.com/icb
Received on Thu Jun 13 2002 - 13:54:40 CDT
