1. Next’s website tops eCommerce survey
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Aileen O'Toole, Managing Director, AMAS
Usability and overall website scores. Source: AMAS survey of 50 Irish websites, October 2008
The Irish website of clothing retailer Next has emerged as Ireland’s top online shopping site in a large-scale study of Irish eCommerce sites.
Conducted by AMAS for State of the Net, the survey shows that some of the bestknown traditional retailers, such as Hughes & Hughes and DID, had the worst scores among the 50 sites surveyed.
The sites were scored agains a checklist of eCommerce good practice and on items that affect user-friendliness.
Next website. Source: www.nextdirectory.
Next (nextdirectory.ie) achieved a score of 90 marks out of a possible 100 and was followed by Meteor, Perfume Ireland, Leinster Rugby and Moviestar, all sharing second place on 85 marks. At the other end of the scale, four
sites shared the worst score of 50 marks each – the online electronics site Elara, online wine merchant Wine Online, bookseller Hughes and Hughes, and electrical retailer DID.
Among the main findings were:
• 40% of the sites are top-tier
sites, achieving scores of 75 marks or above, with another 24% in the middle ground and
36% achieving poor scores (60 marks or less)
• Checkout usability – the ease with which customers can complete a purchase – varied considerably from site to site. Only 24% scored highly for this, with 52% in the middle and 24% on low marks
• Many sites do not take sufficient steps to protect themselves from pricing mistakes, despite the highprofile Aer Lingus underpricing episode earlier this year
• Only two websites – Champion Sports and Best Quote – used HTML code that passed validating tests. This means that the vast majority of the sites are not complying with a best practice requirement that is also important for accessibility
The 50 eCommerce websites were compared and scored for convenience, efficiency, transparency and compliance. The sites are all Irish or market their goods and services to Irish consumers. They
include many well-known sites selling clothing, groceries, electronics, telecoms services, books, travel and insurance online. The survey methodology involved a review of the 50 sites against 11 points of eCommerce good practice. The checkpoints were weighted to give an overall possible score of 100.
The points checked included:
• The clarity and simplicity of the online checkout process
• Whether customers have to opt-out to avoid extra charges or signing up to marketing messages
• The prominence of privacy policies and terms and conditions
• The download speeds of the sites based on a 1.44mbps T1 connection
• Whether the sites passed the valid code check
• Using secure connections for online transactions by credit card
The website that everyone loves to hate – Ryanair – got a score of 60, which put it in the middle of the table. The airline has made some improvements in its site which led to a better score than it got last year. Ryanair was the worst performer in last year’s State of the Net online shopping survey, which is not directly comparable with this year’s survey.
Why bother with usability? Because the business case is so compelling. Some studies show that online shopping sites that are customer-centric, well-structured and have efficient checkouts can enhance their online sales by as much as 100%. Good website usability also ensures more repeat visits and brand loyalty.
Therefore it is very suprising that 24% of the sites in the study had poor checkout usability scores. This means that there were barriers there to stop customers spending money with them. How sensible is that in the current market?
See the full list of the companies and their scores.
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