E-commerce failure and its causes

The dot-com is one of the major failure in E-Commerce history. According to Wikepedia and thanks to them for their hard works to keep the history of it. Here how it says:

A Dot-com company, or simply a dot-com, is a company which does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" (in turn derived from the word "commercial"). During the stock market crash ending the Dot-com bubble, many failed and failing companies became known as dot-bombs, dot-cons, dot-composts or dot-gones.

While dot-com can refer to present day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with this business model during the late 1990s. Many of these startups formed to take advantage of the surplus of venture capital funding. Many were launched with very thin business plans, sometimes with nothing more than an idea and a catchy name. The stated goal was often to "get big fast" i.e. capture a majority share of whatever market was being entered. The exit strategy usually included an IPO and a large payoff for the founders.

Others were existing companies that re-styled themselves as Internet companies, many of them legally changing their names to incorporate a .com suffix.

After the crash, many of the surviving firms dropped the .com from their names.

Reasons of the failure.

1. Weak site design- The site should provide easy or friendly interface to customers. Merely poor design won't attract customer, not even a click on it.
2. Inadequate site usability-"Web usability," a concept that has gained a lot of ground in the past year, is all about making the right first impression. More than having a good web site design, your site must be both useful and usable for your audience. Your site must perform the function for which it was designed, with the minimal amount of user frustration, time and effort.
3. Obstacles to shopping- Besides good interface, you must provide a freedom to let the customer to do shopping online rather than ask them ask too much personal information as soon as they drop by your site.
   
4. Lack of comprehensive shopping- There is no truth to the "if you build it, they will come" notion on the Web. There are millions of web sites on the Web, and you need to create a reason and way for customers to come and visit your site. More than just customer "eyeballs," you need to be able to convert their visit to actual sales.
5. Poor customer service- Customers are always right and we open business to welcome customer to buy product so both customers and ourselves happy about it. Treat your customers badly and you can be sure that they will never visit your site again.
6. Wrong product fit- As e-commerce expands, there is one basic tenet that you should understand: not all products can be sold online. Many dot-coms had the mistaken notion that they can sell anything and everything on the Internet, only to realize that it just not true. Some products lend well to this medium, but there are many products that are hard, if not impossible, to sell on the Internet.
7. Failure to prepare for success- Once you have your e-commerce site up and running, with good traffic levels and high sales conversion rates, your next concern will be preparing for your growth. Success on the Internet can come quickly - if you are lucky and do things right - that you may find yourself ill prepared to handle the growth.
8. Slow and faulty fulfillment- You open a site to do business, that means you also need to satisfy the customer's' needs. If the customer wants the product delivered on time, then do it right. Products delivered late can destroy customer loyalty and thwart any remaining willingness to repurchase from your site.
9. Failure to specialize- Your level of capitalization will dictate the focus of your online business. If you are able to get investors to finance your business, you can target a broader product category for your business. You can aim to be like Wal-Mart of the retail world, or the Amazon.com of the Internet.
10. Failure to consider security as top priority- Security should be a top priority even before your site goes live.