Tech Leaders Discuss Ecommerce Market, Future
In the constantly shifting landscape of ecommerce, it can be tough to keep up.
During a discussion sponsored by the Women Tech Council’s three leaders in the industry talked about the ways they try to stay ahead of the curve—and compete with other tech giants, like Amazon.
Stormy Simon, president of Overstock.com, said the industry has advanced to the point of allowing unprecedented opportunities for drawing customers. That advantage is half of a double-edged sword, with the other half being the increasingly specific demands of shoppers, she said, particularly those who are younger.
“It used to be someone would look for ‘red couch.’ But Millenials, these dang kids, they look for ‘red couch, three cushions, buttons on the back,’” she said. “They have these eight-word searches. They know what they want.”
Ease and speed of use also matter to consumers more than ever, said Denise Leleux, a vice president at eBay who runs the internet marketplace giant’s Global Customer Service team. The company has been carefully combing through its processes to make sure nothing adds friction to the customer service experience, she said, including everything from technical errors or glitches to things that just might be unclear to the customer.
When things don’t work seamlessly, she said, customer dissatisfaction is expressed in numbers.
“Our last app was a little slower—we’re talking milliseconds, but we did notice a dropoff [of use], and we’re fixing that,” she said.
By Lisa Christensen, Utah Business