With the holiday shopping season approaching, it is painfully obvious that e-commerce companies are shooting themselves and their new industry in their virtual feet. Often they are not, with interfaces that confuse, misdirect or just plain fail.
Online stores have to be as omnipresent as traditional stores.
Often, e-commerce sites fail to get their messages out or are buried in a sea of competitors with similar offerings, names and missions. Finally, they have to be trustworthy. No amount of progress in the other areas will overcome the public's fear that this new marketplace is fraught with danger. Almost daily, reports come of another hacker attack, another database theft. The problem seems to stem from overdependence on computer systems to fill in where human beings once handled the transactional workload.