Boo.com: Poster Child for Dot.com Failure?
Presented By:
Richard Nagel
Introduction
New business for online shoppers Offered high-quality designer sportswear Offered brand names such as:
– North Face– Adidas– Fila– Cosmic Girl
How Boo.com worked
Enabled online-shoppers to view products in full-color and three dimensional
Zoom Feature Rotate items 360 degrees Advanced search engine allowed to search
by color, brand, price, and style Miss Boo – animated figure for questions Loyalty points
How Boo.com worked
Free delivery within one week Free returns Fluent in seven languages Local currencies were accepted from 18
countries– These countries national taxes were calculated
and collected
Issues
Launch date kept changing Spent 25 million in advertising alone Only 40% of customers could access site Site design was slow and difficult to use 1 in 4 attempts to make purchase worked Site not compatible with Macintosh Spent over 200 million to launch the site
Short Life Span
Boo.com was live for about 6 months Site too complex for users Losing money and had to discount clothing
40 percent Poor planning and control
– Budgeting, planning, execution
Bought out by Fashionmall.com
Recommendations
Start with smaller region Established a firm budget Test the software
– Prevented slow times– Access issues
Researched what the users had– Type on internet service– What their expectations were