E-commerce - Cape Peninsula University of Technology

egister but have not shopped. The view is not to only attract these people to
the site but to also make them to start shopping. It doesn't help us to
advertise on radio etc rather we try to market to them directly, find out what is
stuck in them and also try to improve the site in order to attract them. So, if
we get those people in we'll improve the profit and that is the logic.
Q: DO YOU KNOW WHAT COULD BE THE REASON WHY SOME PEOPLE
WHO VISIT YOUR SITE DO NOT SHOP?
A: Yes we know. We have asked these questions and some have responded to
it A lot of them just think that the site is a little bit unreal. For instance the
registering processes takes a long time to complete as it is about three
pages. We have cut it down to about a page making it easier to register.
Although online shopping process is always very complex and very difficult,
we think that we've got it right. There are at least about 20,000 products
which you can choose from. In order to present these in a way that makes it
easy for the person to go from e.g. buying shampoo for the baby to
baked beans for the braai, we have to find a way to present the layout
nicely to the buyer. At the moment we have presented it relatively simple but
we need to re-look at that in tenns of speed more than the layout. We need
to increase the speed rather than concentrating more on the layout.
Q: IS E-RETAlLlNG WORKING FOR THE COMPANY AND IN WHAT WAYS?
A: Yes it is working and it is becoming more established. Going to its fifth year
tells me that it's working and it's settled. This process is working out nicely
and we are very proud of it.
Q: DOES E-RETAILlNG WORK FOR YOUR COMPANY IN TERMS OF
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. WHAT ARE THE WAYS IN
WHICH E-RETAlLERS SUCH AS YOUR COMPANY CAN ATTRACT
MORE CUSTOMERS?
A: It is called service, service, service! And we haven't even really scratched
that. We need to find ways to really cater for people. For instance, one of
our biggest problems is being out of stock. From the site we tell the
customer that he/she can get about 500ml All Gold tomato sauce but on the
day he goes to the store to buy it, he does find none in the shelf. So what do
we do? We don't want the customer to use Koo because she can't find what
he/she originally wanted. We will now say ok we can get her a smaller bottle.
Initially this customer is usually fine with it, but this might make us loose such
a customer. So, we try to second guess what our customers want that we
have not got in stock. As an e-retail company the first thing we need to do is
to make sure that we are not out of stock and this is one of the bad issues
facing the company and we need to resolve that.
Also we need to find a way of not irritating our customer. On the site our
customer can say that she would take this substitute but in the store she
would say that she would take something else but to substitute it, must be of
this particular range. So, we need to have simple things available that will
make it easy for the customer to choose from.