MYTH NO. 4: It's lucrative. (Myths And Realities of Web commerce Part four)

Despite the online sales success of a handful of E-commerce poster children, for every Dell Computer and Cisco Systems there are dozens of companies like Burlington Coat Factory. The company's Web site sells less merchandise than just one of its 250 retail stores, says CIO Mike Prince. "So far, it just hasn't been a major focus for us," he says.
-------- www.e-shops-list.com ----- Convenience you can never imagine ---- online store list -----

That's because buyers are less likely to purchase "subjective" items such as coats and dresses over the Web than PCs, routers, and books, says Prince. "When you buy a dress, you want to try it on, see how the fabric feels, check out the color," he says. "There's something very special about that experience that you can't get on the Web."

That said, Burlington Coat Factory is revamping its site to feature more products. Also, the company is considering adding a gift registry that would let shoppers visit its stores, identify the specific articles they like, and then register them on the site so that relatives and others can buy gifts online according to those selections. But even if Burlington increased its online sales to equal the volume of 10 of its stores, "that would be significant for a chain our size--and a surprise," Prince says.

Even by the most generous accounts, online retail sales remain only a tiny fraction of what's sold in physical stores or through mail-order catalogs--even in the Web's most popular product categories. Online book sales will account for less than 5% of all U.S. book sales this year, according to Keenan Vision. Online music sales? Less than 2%. Even online travel sales--which will reach $1.8 billion this year, leading all consumer products (except IT products) sold online--won't even reach 1% of the $488 billion in total U.S. travel spending. Web-based advertising revenue also remains minuscule compared with broadcast and print--just 0.4% of ad agency bookings this year.

What about business-to-business E-commerce, which is projected to leave business-to-consumer cybersales in the dust and soar into the trillions of dollars by 2003? That mostly reflects the fact that business-to-business commerce in the offline world is orders of magnitude larger than sales to consumers
-------- www.e-shops-list.com ----- Convenience you can never imagine ---- online store list -----

For most established companies, it's still early in the E-commerce game. It's easy to look at how Amazon.com shook up the book industry in four years and fly into panic mode, fearing that your company could be put out of business tomorrow by a Web startup. But books (and music) are the products best suited to online selling, and Web startups will always get a disproportionate share of attention simply because they're Web startups. Remember: Amazon won't be turning a profit any time soon.

"E-commerce is like the market in China for U.S. companies," says US Web's Laube. "Most probably aren't making a profit there yet, but they're in China because of huge market potential. The returns will be a few years in coming. You have to have deep pockets and be willing to stay with it."