Shopping stats: Online stores provide too little information

the business is located and 39 per cent have no contact email address.
Some 30 per cent of sites profiled provided no telephone number or email
address.

In terms of delivery, 11 per cent of online retailers provided a free
postage or delivery service, while only 15 per cent mentioned offering a
next day or Special Delivery service. Of the delivery companies named on
the web sites, Royal Mail services (including Special Delivery) were
identified in 17 per cent of cases.

With 71 per cent of online shoppers seeking out ratings and reviews
(source: Forrester) it is fairly surprising that only 38 per cent of
online retailers have a testimonial or comments part on their web site.
A FAQ page was identified on 10 per cent of sites.

NetExtract's managing director, Thomas Roberts, said: "Consumers require
reassurance before purchasing from online retailers. This analysis has
highlighted that many online retailers can help further reduce the fears
of potential customers by offering multiple contact channels and
delivery options, and by adding testimonials from current customers to
their sites."

This is backed by recent findings from E-consultancy and Bazaarvoice
that more than half of online customers say reviews are important in
making a purchase. This research also found that 57 per cent of online
retailers are considering adding customer ratings and reviews to their
sites.

From the 1.5 million UK web sites on NetExtract's database, 30,000 sites
have shopping cart facilities and sell online. The report was compiled
by profiling a sample of 10,000 of these UK online retailers' sites.
Site-crawling technology searched for contact details, including
address, phone, fax and email, within each of the sites in the sample.
The keyword and phrase extractor searched for particular terms to
identify any customer testimonials, comments or FAQ pages on the web
sites.