Seven Stone Age Ghosts or What Should Be the Perfect Online Store

For several years now I have had to deal with online shopping. And from the most different sides: from the side of buyers, and from the side of developers, and from the side of online advertising, and from the side of b2b-service, whose clients are, again, online stores. The result of such a dense work with online retail was a certain set of observations and observations, sometimes not entirely obvious and controversial. I want to say right away that it will not be about specific technologies, but rather about business practice in general, and Internet business in particular. I would very much like to read the comments from representatives of medium and large Russian online stores. I think many of them will want to comment on certain points, so I express my respect and thanks for the comments in advance.

In order to solve this or that problem, it is necessary to first formulate it clearly enough. For example, when an ordinary customer comes to your store, he understands what he needs. In turn, our task is to make the client receive exactly what he needs. I constantly hear that everyone is working on it. But I don’t see any results of this work. E-commerce, like 10 years ago, is in the middle of the Stone Age. The colors have changed, the buttons have become more beautiful, the screens are bigger, the prices are higher, and it's still there. Entire departments of marketers, analysts, consultants and development managers [sit in the offices of pants and investors' money] supposedly study the behavior of buyers. Although, if you look into it, in order to determine what the buyer needs, it is enough just to become a buyer yourself, at least for one evening.

It is obvious? Yes of course. And just as much as your customers are often dissatisfied. If you think that they rarely remain dissatisfied, it’s better to bind with this business altogether, because at least half of them will regret at all that they have decided to buy something on the Internet. And it does not matter in which online store they made a purchase - half of them will remain dissatisfied for the same reasons. These reasons remain unchanged for several years. About them will be discussed further. At this short introductory part can be considered complete.
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In an ideal online store there are no dissatisfied customers!

So, in order for your online store to become better, you need to work on what customers do not like , and not on what you like . Surprisingly, but since then, when I first ordered my first product on the Internet (as I remember, it was a magazine with tits), ten years have passed, and the problems are the same. The world around has changed beyond recognition, but the roads in Russia have not changed.

1. Shipping

I always want to know the price with delivery in advance. I always want to have clear options: Russian post (almost free, but for good luck) or DHL (expensive, but convenient), but in the end I always get something between a “so-so” and “terrible”. I want the courier to bring exactly what I ordered (exactly the size, color, set). I want him to come when it is convenient for me, and preferably not in a month. I am not interested in the relationship between the store and the logistic operator. I do not ask the store consultant how I cook an omelet. And even more so I am not interested in the problems of the logistics operator with Russian roads.

2. Payment

Any online store requires proper acquiring and integration with payment systems. If the commissions seem to you to be too high, put them at a premium and reduce the price in another way: bargain with suppliers, reduce costs, optimize logistics. If it seems to you that these problems should disturb your customers, be ready to give them new recipes for making omelets every day. And God forbid me to promote my project here. Many times I tried to buy something on credit in online stores, where it was announced about such a possibility, but I never succeeded. So additional payment instruments are optional. But it is necessary to fasten the “Gentleman's Set of Payment Methods” to the site and set it up so that they can be used.

3. Order

Many times I came across such a situation when, when placing an order, I had serious doubts about the level of my own intellect. Simply put, I felt like a complete idiot, not understanding which button to press on to make something happen. The list of goods, methods of payment, delivery, registration, bonuses - all this is mixed on one or several pages, nothing can be changed or canceled. The buyer should not understand the order system of your engine. The order should be formed simply and clearly. Ordering is the most important procedure on the store's website; the maximum number of designer-software man-hours should be devoted to it. What we see in practice: some VirtueMart does not look like itself, the design of all interface elements is changed beyond recognition, and the order is made as crooked and inconvenient as in the standard template itself. That is, while the seller was thinking how to get the buyer to proceed to the order, he managed to completely forget how this order is made.

4. 24/7/365

Otherwise, you will lose exactly as many potential buyers as your store does not work. And in seconds. If you are not ready to accept and process orders around the clock, without holidays and weekends, it is better to open a regular store (with shelves). Worldwide, online retail is around the clock with delivery and you can pay by card. We have our own special way: only on weekdays, from 10-00 to 16-00, pickup and payment in cash. Are you already feeling in the stone age? No, that's not all.

5. Depth of assortment

If the online store sells slippers, I would like to see there several thousand pairs. Slippers from around the world, all colors and materials, for every taste and color, and the owner of this store and, concurrently, the most important specialist in the world in slippers should be a consultant. This is the perfect option. In real life, there will be a dozen pairs of slippers, two iPhones, MacBook Air, winter tires and a used bicycle in such a shop. This, of course, is an exaggeration, but the essence of the problem is exactly that. The quality of choice is not determined by the number of SKUs offered, but by the depth and quality of the product range.

6. Characteristics of goods

The same texts on thousands and thousands of copies allow you to significantly save on content, but they are absolutely not interested in the buyer and lower the site in the search results. If you sell something, you should understand your products as well as the buyer - this is the immutable law of commerce, which also works great on the Internet. Every time when I have to open 20 tabs with macbooks and look at which SSD costs, and on which SATA, instead of putting one tick in the filter, I curse this online store. If the short description of the goods ends like this: “Display Type: 1 ... [view full]”, I curse this online store twice. If you think that these are special cases for which you should not waste time, you have already lost to competitors.

7. Availability

Availability of goods is the last thing you want to talk about. Yes, everyone wants to reduce stock balances. Let the money work better in advertising or on the stock exchange, and we will order the goods when a buyer appears. Better yet, use drop shipping (so that my supplier could take the goods to the buyer). Everything is fine from the point of view of mathematics, but this is a utopia in business. You will constantly disrupt delivery times and charge new prices to customers if you only sell other people's goods. The combined version will allow you to assess the unobvious benefits of the content of commodity balances in the warehouse (even if the warehouse looks like a shed filled with junk). It is not by chance that most successful online stores sooner or later begin to keep more and more goods available, taking into account such unobvious bonuses as short delivery times and actual prices. Of course, the presence is different: for example, most online stores of household appliances keep goods in stock on the Mitinsky market, and there’s really nothing to say about Apple in stock. IPhones and MacBooks in the so-called presence in RuNet are much more than the same slippers.

If everything is so simple, why in 10 years we have not coped with these problems? I will be very happy if dear readers will have something to add to this “mournful” list. But if we constantly work at least on this, the result will come sooner or later. It is unlikely, of course, that an ideal online store will ever appear in Russia. Abroad, for sure, also has its problems. But if at least one owner of the online store will run over this list and every month will train its top and not-so-great managers on each of the seven points, I will be sure that I have not spent this evening for nothing.