Please help with my Batchelors Research

[thesquirrel01]

Hi
I am Alison, a final year student at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University studying for my BSc Business Information Technology Degree. I would really appreciate some information, opinions and feedback which will assist me with my research into on-Line Trading (e-Business). I am interesting in understanding the following aspects in particular, but would be grateful for any other chat - come on, everyone, go into free-fall and tell me all about it!!

1. What do you like and dislike about purchasing over the internet? What puts you off, or makes you come back for more?

2. What particular aspects of the interface (i.e. the actual website) do you like or dislike?

3. Can you give me some shining examples of websites you have used and admire for their functionality, simplicity and down-right attractiveness.

4. Now, taking the converse view, point me towards those Dogs of websites, that are clunky slow and really annoying.

If you want to take part in my more detailed research - I am particularly interested in those who are running e-Business sites - then mail me at thesquirrel01@hotmail.com with the subject shown as
E-BUSINESS RESEARCH - so that I don't think you are trying to sell me Viagra or inviting me to see your web-cam!!!

Many thanks
Alison

[austinc]

A few dislikes:


Security:
Some sites still don't use https
No way of knowing whether the site is valid or a scam.

Annoyance:
Obnoxious banner ads
Asking for the same piece of information multiple times
Privacy- No real way of knowing your address isn't being sold

I have had nothing but positive experiences with amazon.com, condoms.com, and thinkgeek.com.

My most recent negative experience was with www.thelairofdarkness.com, from whom I ordered 2 rings.

Customer service complaints:
3.5 weeks ago I emailed them about the status of my order - no reply.
Since then I have emailed them 2x more and left a voicemail on their support line, which doesn't ever seem to be manned by a human as I've tried it 6-8x. No replies or callbacks still.

Site design complaints:
1) Their from address on order emails is "the lair of darkness", which of course isn't valid and came through as the@
2) The end of the mail says "If you have any questions concerning your order, please contact us at ." - no email address specified.
3) They still try to prevent right clicking on the page.. I thought everyone grew out of that years ago? It's easy enough to get around, so quit it.
4) Their site map is painfully large at 570078 bytes.
a) wrapping the site map in one font+b tag instead of doing one for each item listed it would save 141505 bytes.
b) The file is 44545 lines long, and 32626 of them only have whitespace.. removing these lines ends up reducing the size by 10601 bytes.


All in all it's a very shoddy site with inefficient unattractive design, and horrid customer service behind it.

[Christopher]

A few dislikes:

My most recent negative experience was with www.thelairofdarkness.com, from whom I ordered 2 rings.

Customer service complaints:
3.5 weeks ago I emailed them about the status of my order - no reply.
Since then I have emailed them 2x more and left a voicemail on their support line, which doesn't ever seem to be manned by a human as I've tried it 6-8x. No replies or callbacks still.



I agree with you there. I placed an order with them for a ring and a set of Alchemy Gothic postacards. They charged me for the total order, sent out half of it and never refunded the remaining total. Upon FREQUENT inquiries I recieved a buffet of responses:

1. The items are on backorder, but we WILL be recieving them in 1 week (2 weeks, 3 weeks, etc...)

2. We have sent you numerous emails explaining this, but your email filter is enabled, so you don't recieves the messages. (I recieved 1 email from them during this time, during which I never changed my email settings. This means that they never sent more than the 1 email I recieved.

3. ??????...This denotes that they ran out of lies to pass on to me about my merchandise. After more than the acceptable timeframe of waiting(several months), I delt with the fact that I had been ripped off. Subsequently I hope that Rainey Moon (I.E. Kristy Tallman) writhes in pain over the burning hellfire that is the money you stole from me.

Cheers