Boo.com – E-commerce failure and its causes

Boo.com was launched 3rd November 1999, with approximately $125million of funding from Europe largest luxury goods group. It was actually a high profile e-tailer website, but due to several serious problems in managing the site, Boo.com had failed in this competing industry.

Boo.com spent a lot for consultancy fees after the launched had been delay for 6 months. The online virtual shopping assistant “Miss Boo” did not successfully helping visitors with purchasing experience. The site was reported slow browsing, poor navigation and irritating technology which caused bad reputation for Boo.com. Moreover, Boo.com can’t fulfill the “three click rules” in web design, which means customer should be able to access to their product information not more than three clicks. Boo.com makes the process over complicated. Besides, computer text appeared instead of graphics causes customers unable to view and purchase the products. Customers’ complaint on the poor online shopping experience that advised customer to limit their transaction discourages customers to drop on the site again. This is because there is no site-testing before it is launched, and they ignore the users of their site.

Boo.com has a nice graphic and 3-D view on the products, but they ignore the price of those products. The bad marketing completely shows where Boo did not fulfill 3 important criteria which are “ease/convenience”, “better prices” and “speed of process”. Furthermore, there is bad planning in expanding their business plan. The management tries to dominate in the market immediately instead of expanding step by step.

Boo.com had lack of sound financial management, due to huge cost spend on technological and employee benefits. Besides, Boo.com did not have a manager to oversee its spending. Instead of cut down the cost, Boo.com employs excessive employees which show a bad human resource management in the company.

The last and the main reason Boo.com fail is where investors refuse to continually inject money into business after it has spent $380 million. This force Boo.com into liquidation and finally it was bought by a US fashion portal, Fashionmall.com.

Revenue model for Google, Amazon.com & e-Bay

E-commerce consists of buying and selling products through computer process and it is quite popular nowadays. Some company focusing on using e-commerce to conduct their business. Some people may be confused that without physical transfer of money, how are these companies going to survive? How are they going to earn money? The answer is through revenue model.

A Revenue Model lays-out the process by which a company actually makes money by specifying how it is going to charge for the services provided. What is the revenue model for Google, Amazon.com and eBay?

Google is a useful and popular search engine; it has many revenue models such as Google AdWords and Google AdSense. Google Adwords is a pay per click advertising program designed to allow the advertiser to present their advertisement to the user. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is an online advertising payment model in which payment is based on qualifying click-through. An advertiser has to pay every time his advertisement receives a click. When a user search for something, there are some related advertisement will be shown on the right side of the screen. You can see a clear picture as below:

If you are interested to advertise in Google you can log on to www.adwords.google.com for more information.

Google AdSense is an advertisement serving program. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, video advertisements on their sites. Revenue is generated on a per-click or per-thousand-ads-displayed basis and the advertisement are administered by Google. AdSense program includes AdSense for search and AdSense for content. Advertisers are required to pay Google a fee each time a user clicks on one of their ads displayed on Google Network members’ web sites. Here is the picture for Google AdSense:

Amazon.com is an American-based multinational e-commerce company. It sell product online such as electronic device, books and games. Amazon is the most successful online-shopping website.

Amazon Marketplace is an online marketplace that allows sellers to sell their product. Buyers can buy new or used items which are sold directly by a third party through Amazon Marketplace; this has created profit for Amazon. Besides that, Amazon will charge a commission rate based on the sale price of an item. When each transaction is being done, Amazon will also charge transaction fee to the seller. In addition, Amazon also allows some user to advertise their advertisement on their website.

eBay is an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. It also establishes localize website in many countries including Malaysia. EBay generates revenue from a number of fees such as insertion fees, promotional fees, and final value fees.

Insertion fees: When an item is listed on eBay, a non-refundable fee is charged.
Final value fees: Fees that charged to the seller at the end of each auction.

Here is an example of the auction:

Every e-commerce business is continuously creating new revenue model in order to bring more profit to the organization. We hope to see a lot of revenue model in the future.

History and evolution of e-commerce

E-commerce has tremendously developed over the past few years. It can be defined as the transaction of selling, buying, transferring or exchanging goods, information and services using the Internet. In the past, people need to go to a physical shop to shop for clothing, groceries, food and many more. However, since e-commerce wan introduced, shopping and travelling time can be cut down. Today, the most successful firm with e-commerce based would be Airasia. Most firm nowadays use E-commerce as a way to cut cost (permit cost, material cost) while trying to improve e their services and goods to be able to compete with other organization in offering their customer a better quality of goods and wider range of products.

History of e-commerce is dated back to when the term “buying and selling”, internet, computer and electricity was invented and introduced. It all started in 1991 when Internet was opened for commercial use. With the help of Electronic Funds Transfer and Electronic Data Interchange which appeared in late 1970s, users are able to exchange business information and carry out electronic transaction. Organizations and companies are able to send commercial documentation electronically to its supplier, customers, as well as creditors.

In 1984, the Electronic Data Interchange was standardized through ASCX12, enabling the transfer of large amount of transaction become more reliable and stable. Next development occurred in 1992 when Mosaic web-browser was made available and adapted into Nescape. It enables easier and convenient access to electronic commerce. This is when online retail products are offered and purchases are made online by the customer The Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) was introduced which allows faster access and more stable connection to the internet.

The development and success of E-commerce can be seen in 1995 with two biggest E-commerce based companies which are Amazzon.com and eBay.com. In 1999, retail spending over the Internet reaches $20 billion according to business.com and is still expending again day after day.

E-commerce success and its causes- eBay

In today business world, e-commerce is become more and more important for business activity which conducted over the internet. As we can see, there is more business engaged and sell the products and services online.

eBay, is one of the most successful example of e-commerce business. It is the world’s largest online marketplace, where anyone can trade online anytime and anywhere. There are million items available for fixed-price and also auction-style trading which is conducted online in their day to day e- commerce business.

Questions arose as how eBay did and the reason of the success and sustainability to be the leading in the online trading platform?
The key successful factor is the trust and safety. eBay has developed a Trust and safety team which is responsible to maintain a safe trading marketplace for people from all around the world to trade with each other. For example, there is a set of rules and regulation to guide the clients whenever they trade in eBay. The rules and regulation is strictly enforceable to prevent any fraud and unethical transactions occurred.

Moreover, eBay’s transaction processing to make online payment is supported by the PayPal, which is the leader in the online payment solution. It enables an individual and business to securely and easily make or receives their payment by online. On the other hand, PayPal fraud prevention would keep buyers’ financial information private and highly confidential from the sellers and other to others unauthorised access. Other than using PayPal to make the payment, buyers also can make their payment by credit card, debit card, Paymate, Propay and other payment methods.

The next success contributor to eBay is a convenient platform to search and bargain for the item. A buyer can find the items that they wish to purchase by either searching or browsing through the catalogue. For the buyer who is looking for a specific item, they can just enter the descriptive or key word of the item into the search column. There are also some specific options which allow the buyer to narrow their search.

Also, eBay provides a feedback option which enables the buyers or sellers to leave their feedback and comments on particulars products, services, and even comment on the members. This option played a significance role because it is a useful option which ensures the buyers with the reputation of members before they trade with each others. This can increase the trustworthy of a buyer to other members who they wish to trade with.

To be sustainable and continue to be the leading in e-commerce, eBay is striving for continuous improvement in all aspect.