October 6, 1997 Don't blame Net consumers for slow I-commerce growth It's common for reports on the state of business-to-consumer Internet commerce to include some explanation for the fact that consumer purchases on the Internet haven't exactly rocketed into the stratosphere. Usually, these explanations make some kind of reference to the fact that most consumers don't yet feel comfortable making purchases on the Net. That's a lame excuse. If anyone's to blame for the small size of the consumer I-commerce market, it's the merchants. The truth is, with a few notable exceptions, most so-called I-commerce sites are still hard-to-use, offer a poor selection of products, have limited payment options, and are, in short, slower and less convenient than shopping through other means. Security concerns? To be sure, Internet security is still far from completely settled, and you'd be a fool not to feel a little concerned when sending your credit card out over the open Internet to a store whose physical location you may not even know. But the dangers have been greatly exaggerated. With the use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) -- which most commerce-oriented Web sites offer -- transmissions of information between your browser and a remote Web server are encrypted. So even if they were intercepted, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to extract a credit card number and expiration date from the data stream. Sure, encryption schemes such as that used by SSL can be cracked -- but it takes a lot of computer power. And who's going to apply a lot of horsepower just to get the number of a card with a credit limit of a few thousand bucks? Code crackers with that kind of technology have bigger fish to fry. Second, the likelihood that someone is actively monitoring the packets you send back and forth over the Internet is extremely small. There's so much traffic on the Net, how would a potential thief know where to begin looking? Even if somebody does get your credit card number, your liability as a consumer is limited to $50. The credit card company absorbs the rest if you can show that you've been ripped off. Sure, it's a hassle -- but you're not going to go bankrupt if someone steals your credit card online any more than you will if your pocket gets picked. Most savvy consumers know this. So apart from some initial hesitation, the fear of getting ripped off is probably not what's stopping them from buying on the Internet. After all, merchants have successfully sold goods online for years, through commercial online services such as AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy. Online stores can do more What's holding consumers back is the lack of a compelling reason to go shopping online. To be successful, an online store needs to offer more than a comparable retail store or physical catalog. What that "more" is can vary: An I-commerce site can be more convenient and quicker, it can offer a larger selection, or it can provide more product information than traditional sales channels. Or it can offer lower prices, either as pure incentive to consumers or as a result of a lower cost per sale online. The successful Internet merchants already know this. That's why they're moving lots of products through their sites, even when they're selling products to markets that aren't traditionally thought of as Web-savvy. So why is it, then, that so many companies' sites offer less than their usual channels do? Why do so many online catalogs have a smaller selection of products than their print equivalents? Why shouldn't customers be able to get all the information on a product that's available in the retail outlet -- and much, much more? Sometimes, the answer is that technology just isn't up to the task yet. With clothing, for instance, it's hard to convey the exact texture and color of a product on a Web page. A printed catalog offers much greater resolution and more perfectly matched colors, and a retail stores lets you actually handle the goods. But in most cases, the reason an online store isn't up to snuff is simply that its operators haven't yet put the necessary effort into developing a really effective site. So don't blame consumers for the size of the I-commerce market today. If you offer a compelling reason to shop on your site, the customers will be there. Dylan Tweney is the editor of InfoWorld's Focus on I-Commerce section. He welcomes your comments at dylan@infoworld.com. Are you afraid of using your credit card online? Or do you charge up a storm? Get vocal in our online forum. (To access the forum, you need to register, if you haven't done so already.) Missed a column? Don't despair -- click here to catch up.