Boo.com: An E-Commerce Failure

Boo.com is an example of an E-commerce failure. It is one of the famous Dotcom failures. Boo.com was a British Internet company established in 1998 and founded by Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrick Hedelin. Boo.com was launched in 1999 and sold branded fashion lines through the internet.

There are several reasons that caused Boo.com to fail:

User Experience
The website of Boo.com was poorly designed for its target users. The site was too relying on JavaScript and Flash technology to display its products and a sales assistance of the site called Miss Boo. The home page alone already was a few hundred kilobytes and users have to wait when loading the website which was very slow. When Boo.com was created, about 20% of home users used dial-up internet connection which did not allow them to access the website at a fast rate. Therefore, the users were not willing to visit the website again because it was wasting their time waiting for the website to respond. The web page design usability is flawed and it confused the customers.

Overspending
Boo.com’s founders did not manage their capital effectively. They spent $188 million in just only six months to make the company globalized but Boo.com’s sales did not achieve the expectations of the management. Also, the management’s lack of clear direction and executive decision on a proper staff recruitment (how many and what type of staff should be recruited), had caused them a crippling payroll cost.

Overall the reason for failure of Boo.com was because of poor management of services and internal control.

Therefore, if you are interested in venturing into e-commerce business, you have to prepare all the relevant information and the website must be able to customize to meet all the needs of customers, this will lead you away from similar failure.

References:
http://www.witiger.com/ecommerce/dotcomfailures.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com