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Question of the Day: Will you be subscribing to the new Disney+ R49 streaming package?
'Poor Web site performance is costing retailers millions'
- Thread starter rpm
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Ozymandias
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Allow trusted payment systems like PayPal or Google Checkout into this country and the whole online landscape will change. Why has e-commerce been so effective overseas and not here? In SA, the main online outlets are run by companies with a high street presence. There is no discounting to the prices in their high street shops. The difference overseas is that a whole crop of online shops discount the high street prices because they have less overheads.
How much of these losses can be attributed to high cost of maintaining a transactional Web site. High costs against poor online revenues - I wonder why? Most of the time, it is cheaper to find a USA online e-tailer and import your product from there.
Also, the web design industry in this country is incredibly immature. People here are only focussed on making their site look pretty. Things like usability and SEO are often completely unheard of. Take a look at some the high profile South African sites that have recently been launched (the new FNB page, do.co.za). They're like Paris Hilton... Good looking, but utterly useless 
Not only that - here, online shops charge much the same price as a physical store, and charge you for shipping. So you have the convenience of shopping online, but it costs you more and you have to wait for your goods to be delivered (often 5 to 7 days).
Whereas overseas, the goods are cheaper, you often don't pay shipping (depending on how much you buy, on some sites) and they ship pretty quickly (sometimes 2 to 3 days, sometimes next day).
I find a lot of the websites of major traditional retailers here are pretty useless anyway, the sort you visit once and don't go back to, they hardly have any products on them as well. Its no wonder then that they're not profitable.
I agree with the comments about unrealistic websites being one of the reasons. However, I think an important component of an online buyers experience is the ease of processing their credit card payment. With my old payment gateway I had many complaints about the delay between my clients entering their details, clicking 'pay' and the 'successful transaction' advice. I have a new payment gateway company now (not naming it here as don't want to be accused of advertising!) who facilitate really fast transactions, and give me great service all round. I've noticed a large drop in my abandaned shopping cart transactions! So ease of payment process definitely has a positive effect.