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Implementation problems for click-and-mortar ventures




>From Clicks to Bricks
http://www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/display/0,2799,13256,00.html 

With established plays like Barnes & Noble and JC Penney seeing success
online, the pressure is on for other retailers to maximize potential sales
channels and move to the Net. A recent benchmark study from Deloitte &
Touche took a look at how offline retailers handle the challenges of an
electronic storefront. Of the 156 retail companies surveyed, 76 percent
have a functioning site, but only 29 percent of those sites are set up for
Internet commerce. 

Among offline retailers that offer e-commerce, sales and profits are
marginal. On average, e-commerce sites accounted for 4.7 percent of
overall sales. Almost half  48 percent  of responding companies generated
1 percent or less of total sales through their sites. And expectations are
far from high: Half of the retailers use profitability as a measure of
their sites' success, and only 15 percent of the companies generated a
profit. 


Brick-and-click operations are wrestling with implementation issues,
including order fulfillment and customer service. Many take advantage of
their offline presence by picking items for shipment from either their
stores or current distribution centers. The number of items sold on
retailers' sites ranged widely: One-fifth offered over 1,000 options,
while one-third listed fewer than 60. 


Thirty percent of sites sell items that are available only online, about
one-quarter sell the same merchandise as they carry at their retail
outlets, and 27 percent offer a portion of their offline stock. Most
merchants update their online offerings either weekly or
monthly. Sixty-three percent use the same pricing online as in other sales
channels, while slightly more than one-quarter have different Net prices
only 5 percent of merchants alter pricing based on the customer. 


The consumer ideal  a customer-service agent available via a toll-free
phone call 24 hours a day  was offered by only 28 percent of e-commerce
merchants surveyed. More common was an 800 number confined to business
hours. And customer-service staffers have little access to information
about the shopper: Four out of 10 sites couldn't track an order, while
purchase history eluded almost half of the sites.

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Lisa Potter
School of Information and Library Science
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill