Some factors that are relevant in assessing the potential for e-commerce to be an effective way to sell a specific products are: Some products may, however, be economically marketed online. However, in most cases, selling online will probably be more costly than selling in traditional stores due to the high costs of processing orders and direct shipping to the customer. Some people have suggested that the Internet may be a less expensive way to distribute products than traditional “brick-and-mortar” stores. Sites may “crash” on the user or prove unreliable, and many consumers have found themselves unable to complete their transactions.
These animations have proven very unreliable. A major problem is that many of the more recent, fancier web sites rely on “java script” to provide animation and various other impressive features. However, there is often a constant struggle between web site operators and the search engines to outguess each other, with the web promoters trying to “spam” the search engines with repeated usage of terms and “meta tags.” The fact that many computer users employ different web browsers raises questions about compatibility. It is crucial for a firm to have its site indexed favorably in major search engines such as Yahoo, AOLFind, and Google. Research has found that most search engines have a great deal of “false hits” (sites irrelevant that are identified in a search-e.g., information about computer languages when the user searches for foreign language instruction) and “misses” (sites that would have been relevant but are not identified). First of all, the desired domain name may not be available-e.g., American Airlines could not get “” and had to settle for “.” There is also a question having your site identified to potential users. There are a number of problems in running and developing web sites. This is one of the reasons why the quality of data collected online is often suspect. However, the response rates are likely to be very unrepresentative and recent research shows that it is very difficult to get consumers to read instructions. Market research: Data can be collected relatively inexpensively on the Net.
For example, when a consumer searches for a specific term in a search engine, a “banner” or link to a firm selling products in that area can be displayed.