Usability and visibility problems affect online insurers
Foolproof's 2006 Online Shopping Survey into insurance predicts rapid growth in online purchasing of motor and home insurance policies, but points out that growth is hampered by poor usability.
The good news for online insurers is that consumers see the benefits of avoiding long phone calls for quotes and insuring online, but insurers are urged to make improvements, especially when it comes to usability.
Eight second rule for e-commerce websites now halved
Four seconds is the maximum length of time the average online shopper will wait for a web page to load before potentially abandoning a retail site.
In the research by Akamai, poor site performance ranked second only to high product prices and shipping costs as leading factors for dissatisfaction among online shoppers.
Customers punish offline stores for bad online experiences
Research in the US has revealed the extent to which frustrated online shoppers hold grudges against online retailers and their physical counterparts.
The research, by US internet performance tracking company Gomez, reveals that 65% of online shoppers would stop or reconsider shopping at a company’s physical store if they had a poor online experience.
Bumper Christmas expected for online customer service
Online customer service departments may be dealing with up to five times more emails in the pre-Christmas run up than at any other time of the year.
The two weeks before Christmas will be a busy one as anxious customers contact retailer’s customer service departments to see whether their purchases are going to turn up in time for the big day.
Blog Round-up: McDonalds eaters get virus, and Yahoo!'s small business scheme
A summary of the major stories doing the rounds throughout the blogosphere today...
Customers unhappy with broadband customer service
A new survey has shown that consumers are generally happy with the quality of home internet services, but also revealed a high level of dissatisfaction over customer service.
In Point Topic’s latest Broadband Consumer Survey, 91% of broadband customers said they were happy with the quality and reliability of their internet service, and 82% are satisfied with download times.
Online safety scheme to get revamp
Word has reached us that the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) is preparing to re-launch its ‘Internet Shopping Is Safe’ scheme, which aims to reassure UK consumers about online security.
Marketers in the dark: Visitors vs Concurrent Users - Web Capacity and Load Testing
When your sales conversion is lower than expected - asking the tech team for web performance metrics may not help: visitors per hour is not enough, concurrent users is plain unhelpful.
Telecoms companies criticised for poor online customer service
New research has shown that online companies need to dramatically improve their customer service and offer more help to customers on their sites. Telecoms providers came off worst in the survey, with banking websites the best performers.
The survey, by eService provider Transversal, has revealed that customers often face waits of up to 2-3 days for their emails to be answered, a situation which is exacerbated by the lack of online help offered by some websites. Some 60% of customer emails are generated by the lack of available information on websites.
Users mystified by Web 2.0, says report
Nielsen//NetRatings has released a
survey
that shows the latest internet trends and technologies are still a mystery to many UK consumers.
The report shows 52% of British web users believe online and digital technologies make their life easier, but a similar percentage say they find them difficult to follow.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
