I recently returned a wifi router to Futureshop as it was useless and I needed to upgrade. In front of me in the line up was a nervous looking young man with a Sony eBook reader in his hand. As his turn came to approach the returns counter he asked for a refund and as the lady inspected the item he continually stuttered there was nothing wrong with it. This is a familiar sight to me and I recognise it as 'upgrade fever'. The hope that an item you recently purchased or were given can be returned in the hope you can buy the latest thing that got launched which makes your old 'cool gadget', uncool.

Immediately after as I walked to the Wifi Router section to find a worthy replacement I passed the young man again in the 'Apple' section of the store frantically pouring over the Apple website showing the iPad (released only that morning). He looked relaxed now as he had returned his Sony eBook reader and probably had sufficient funds to purchase the iPad when it launches in Canada.

I recently joined up with zip.ca to supplement my TV watching and entertainment needs. After much research I found that Zip listed that they had a dispatch warehouse in Vancouver. This was good news and I expected that I would receive my DVD's within 2-3 days at least. Or so I thought. After adding a plethora of DVD's to my zip list, or zipping DVD's to my list as they call it, I was excited when my first dispatched email was sent within 3 hours of signing up. A great start; From start up to dispatch in 3 hours. The fall came when it listed Ontario as the dispatch depot....so nearly a week later I finally received my first DVD.

This experience with zip.ca echoes all the online ordering I have done from within Vancouver. The main issue seems to be there are insufficient warehousing options on the west coast or it is not financially viable for these companies to hold stock on the West Coast.

Paypal and comScore have released their 8th Annual merchant survey which includes some extremely useful statistics regarding shopping cart abandonment rates. Canada needs to overcome two main hurdles before it can make eCommerce a more viable option to it's residents. The first is to reduce shipping charges and the second is to create more warehousing options on the West Coast to increase delivery speeds (and therefore reduce delivery charges to West Coast residents).

The overall abandonment rates were around 45% with these constituting a micro view.

High shipping charges: 46%
Wanted to comparison shop: 37%
Lack of money: 36%
Wanted to look for a coupon: 27%
Wanted to shop offline: 26%
Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24%
Item unavailable at checkout: 23%
Couldn’t find customer support: 22%
Security concerns: 21%

My poor Son has lost his voice this week due to a cold. It is bad enough that he can't talk yet, but to then have his only communication method (shouting/crying) taken from him is a real tragedy. For some reason in the wee hours this morning I had the picture of the casual e-Commerce shopper arriving at your/an online store. On arrival there is no 'contact us', no live chat, no email address and poor usability confronting them. It seems that more and more people believe you can set up an e-Commerce store and leave it thinking the 24/7 nature of the internet will ensure sales. This is a basic failure on the part of any e-Commerce store.

Having customers wanting to connect, communicate and hopefully convert is brilliant. But if their voice is taken from them as they have no communication channel by which to speak through they will without doubt lose confidence, become frustrated and leave.

Sales lost, frustrated customers and bad word of mouth at the next coffee session with friends.

Be online with your customers is my advice. e-Commerce is not set and forget anymore than a bricks and mortar store is.