-
“Canadian online shoppers complain that Web retailers are not serious about selling on their websitesâ€
Joanna Briggs is living the dream. You can find Joanna being anti-social on many social networking sites.
Joanna is slowly documenting the re-use of bank buildings in Canada. If you know of a former Canadian bank building that is vacant or reused, please submit the location information»
No users were harmed in the design or development of this site.
Clearly I make up a large percentage of the Canadian online shopping market. 🙂
Trying to shop online as a Canadian is an exercise in frustration. I agree with the premise that the lack of options is definitely a factor. My question is how can they possibly know how many Canadian shoppers they *would* have without online purchasing even being an option? Or the half-assed approaches to it would be disheartening to anyone…
A couple of my recent irksome experiences:
– Bombay Company blew away its Canadian Web presence entirely- now refers Canadian customers to visit the US site (no CDN pricing available) or visit a store or call a store for CDN pricing. Before they demoed the site they had a complete ecommerce CDN model. Could they not have just added the CDN pricing to the US site if they didn’t want to ship, and allowed customers to toggle? Most of their stores are in malls and don’t even *have* 2/3 of their items.
– homedepot.ca – you don’t find out if what you ordered is in stock until *after* you’ve placed an order. We ordered a few items and then received an email the next day that “some part” of the order was on backorder. Then you wait while they hold your ENTIRE ORDER until that piece comes in. Other people can order the other pieces out from under you while you wait, so in theory, they can sell out of everything while you’re waiting. Nice.
– IKEA.ca – why is it when I type “dresser” in search, I get no hits, yet when I type “chest of drawers” it returns 21 results? hello? synonyms anyone?
Another huge reason I think is Canada Post’s ridiculous shipping costs. Seriously. They’re over the top.
I digress.
That’s so true, and this is working me into a rant.
[…] A recent comment on this very blog has triggered a lot of thoughts I’ve had about e-commerce in Canada. Erica pointed out many examples: it really sucks. No thanks, just browsing, online shoppers say was the original article that blames under-developed e-commerce in Canada for the lack of Canadians making online purchases. And, it shouldn’t have to be that way. […]