Thursday, October 15, 2009

Why is advice so hard to take?

Consultant Martin Newman has just published a blog post of top tips for selling more over the Christmas period. All his advice is sound and I recommend that anyone in charge of a retail website should read his blog post.

The interesting question is why aren’t merchants already doing all the things suggested? Selling online has been going on for 15 years now and yet many merchants persist in following bad practices indentified many years ago. I suppose I shouldn’t complain – both Martin and I make our livings helping merchants improve their sites and that’s easier if the sites have obvious failings – but it seems odd that so many ecommerce web sites are still, frankly, not very good.

It can’t be just money, though clearly it often is. Tesco aren’t short of cash yet their site doesn’t follow many of Martin’s tips. We’ve had clients at Digivate who’ve refused to make changes we’ve suggested despite clear evidence that the investment would be recouped in months.

Perhaps people just fear change. Perhaps people feel that they already have enough to worry about and so decide to leave a ‘good enough’ website alone.

What do you think?

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