Shopping habits and website quality

How much does the quality of a website affect your shopping habits?

I was shopping recently looking for hard to find items and I realised how little time I spent at poorly designed,slow websites even if they had what I wanted for a decent price.

I've also realised if they don't have at least one half decent picture of a product or a bad specifications page I won't buy from them,I also won't buy from anyone who doesn't have an "about us" section with published contact details.

So I've been wondering if this is a typical pattern with other shoppers and more importantly is the quality of a website a good indicator of how a company does business? If this is known why are so many poor business websites?

Thoughts,opinions?

 

I agree with you Rikky. If there are not good pictures and descriptions of the items I won't mess with them. It does not cost much to have a decent website, and digital cameras are cheap. I saw a sig on a gun forum for a guy that makes holsters. Was thinking, I would like a holster for my Glock will check the guy out. He may make really nice stuff, but all he has online are pictures on FaceBook. Not thanks, will keep on buying form the guy that mad my 1911 holster. He actually has a website. (And makes nice stuff too.)

A little OT, but why do people try to sell used stuff without a picture on forums? I mean, I can see if it is new in the box, I can look it up, but if used, it will have some wear. :confused

 

It definitely makes a difference. I had to replace my primer on my weedeater. I ended up going with a higher priced item because the website included all the part #s, a list of weedeaters it fit and installation instructions. The lower priced site featured a blurry thumbnail photo and a four word description.

 

God! I hate that when you find a product you want then notice "Click for price" and it gives you an email form to fill in.

Yeah lets rant about website hates:-D

 

Hope they offer free shipping, FedEx would kill you on shipping!! :-D

That kills me when they don't list a price! They do it to try to play car salesmen with you. I hate shopping at car lots! Wish they would just put the price on the window, and leave me alone! I will raise my hand when I want one of the to come run their mouth.

Ahh, sorry, rant off. :-D

 

Poor search function is another pet hate,I've been on multi million pound company websites and the product search function can only find exact letter for letter matches.

I mean cmon? I know a guy round the corner who can optimise a search engine for closest match and incorrect spelling.

 

I just ran into this at my grocery's web site, not the first time either. I was looking for 'sundried tomatos' which gave me a null page, then I took a page from Dan Quayle(remember him?) and added an 'e' to read tomatoes'. Bingo!

It's too bad that they're the only game in Quebec, with 8M pop., that they still don't have a 'fuzzy search'. I'm going to send them a complaint emphasizing the potential loss of customers though I doubt anything will happen as it must be expensive to implement that.

It's a good site but if one can't spell then they're in trouble if they want to order over the i-net.

 

Well...the proper spelling IS with the "e".

 

Spell check can be a good thing Dan, oops, I mean Augie.... :-D:-D

 

The texters would really have a hard time finding 'letus' then even with a fuzzy search.:-D

 

LOL LOL 'Tis true! :-D

 

That's my point it isn't,you just set your search engine up to use a "did you mean?" just like a spell checker.

If I can get multiple FREE spell checking add ons for Firefox that work almost perfectly I'm sure a rich company can get one too.

And they don't even have to spell check the entire English language just the few hundred product names and keywords they sell.

 

Sorry to resurrect my own thread but I've just come across another pet peev or should I say PDF peev

The PDF price list.:mad