One of the top ten E-commerce failure is Boo.com. Boo.com was a British Internet company founded by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin that famously went bust following the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. After several highly publicized delays, Boo.com launched in the Autumn of 1999 selling branded fashion apparel such as clothing and cosmetics over the Internet. The company spent $135 million of Venture capitalists' money in just 18 months, and it was placed into receivership on 18 May 2000 and liquidated. In June 2008, CNET hailed Boo.com as one of the greatest defunct websites in history.
There are several reasons behind the downfall of Boo.com. Boo.com’s founders spent £125 million in just six months, to market itself as a global company but then had to deal with different languages, pricing and tax structures in countries it served. Their sales was not up to their expectation, especially when there were a high numbers of returned products by their customers (the company mysteriously decided to pay postage on returns). In our opinion, we feel that Boo.com should have spent lower amount to market itself as a global company. This is because, as a new company they should expand their business slowly in order for them to cope up. Besides that, customers may not trust a new E-commerce company. Therefore, instead of expanding business world wide, they should have focused in one country to gain
The complicated design required the site to be displayed in a fixed size window, which limited the space available to display product information to the customer. Navigation techniques changed as the customer moved around the site, which appealed to those who were visiting to see the website but frustrated those who simply wanted to buy clothes.Its interface was also complex with a hierarchical system that required the user to answer four or five different questions before revealing that there were no products in stock in a particular sub-section. The same basic questions then had to be answered again until results were found. In our opinion, we feel that the company should have considered about the customers who have slow internet connection.
Reference Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com
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