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