A Post Mortem On The Totally Predictable Death of Boo

You cannot make this stuff up.

In Sweden, a model, a poetry critic, and a corporate financier raised $120 million. They set up an e-commerce site headquartered in a toney section of London with the idea of selling high-end fashions and sports gear all over Europe. In less than two years, the 300 person staff was fired, the money spent, creditors were picking over the bones, and a cyber-shockwave rumbled across the Internet. Boo.com had died.

A first-year economics major could have predicted this train wreck. Attempting to sell expensive clothing on a web site loaded down with sluggish graphics coupled with impossible navigation would be the recipe for a slow death. However, throw in a cutesy cartoonish screen salesperson, bug-laden software (mark-up language) and over-hyped expectations, the site sunk like a lead canoe. The Boo fiasco has put a face on the excesses that characterize the ever-growing list of carcasses strewn along the highways and byways of the Information Superhighway.

My Experience

A big chunk of the $120 million seed money was spent on promotion. During early 1999, the buzz on the Web was that something big was about to be launched. During that period, it seemed, a new mega-deal involving a limitless supply of venture capital would bring to life yet another colossal web site. Venture capitalists have money to burn. Like almost everyone else, I was captured by the hype. The initial luster faded when the site did not appear on schedule. With backers like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, the Benetton Family, and the French entrepreneur Bernard Arnault, the thinking was Boo could ride out the storm bolstered by the deep pockets of its benefactors.

Finally, in November 1999 the web site opened. Perhaps I anticipated the second coming of Amazon.com or eBay. Instead, what appeared was so over-stuffed and poorly designed, it defied easy characterization. Arrival at the home page felt like walking through knee-deep molasses with hip-boots. Painfully, I attempted to navigate the web site. Boo programmers had made extensive use of Macromedia Flash animations. In addition to the painful delays encountered when loading the sequences, the coup de grace was agonizing failure to break out of the broken Flash routines. At the time, I was using a 56 v.90 modem connection. The Boo designers constructed the site for a small audience with infinite bandwidth. Perhaps if someone pays $1,000 for a pair of loafers, they have a T3 connection to the backbone. If they were shopping on Boo, they would need that (maybe more).

First Impressions

As surfers gain experience traveling around the Web, when shopping, they have less and less patience for pages to load. Recent studies peg the magic number at eight seconds. If the casual surfer visits a site for the first time and fails to assimilate information after eight seconds, they leave in frustration. With so many good web sites, there is no shortage of sites filling this simple requirement. For example, the Google.com homepage typically loads in less than two seconds on my system; altavista.com takes just a bit longer. Ebay.com loads in the 10 to 15 second range. I almost had a birthday waiting for Boo.com to load when I stopped in during my first and final visit. The impression was negative in spades.

Who Will Survive?

With ever-louder predictions of impending implosion of high profile web sites (many of the year 2000 Superbowl e-advertisers face extinction) the carnage will continue. The shortage of profit from sales and advertising revenue means more and more sites quickly burn through IPO funding in order to keep the lights burning and the bandwidth bill paid. One frequently mentioned candidate on the growing endangered list (the buzzards appear circling) is Austin, Texas-based Drkoop.com. The primary reason it heads my list is its telltale characteristic sluggish loading of the homepage. If no effort is made to improve first impression loading, it will join Boo. Studies show that most Web surfers visit the same sites over and over again. When they do venture to a new cyberspot, unless the content is compelling (with result being an overall good first impression) they will not return.

The memory of Boo.com will fade rapidly. Many significant mistakes were made. In fact, it is difficult to uncover one significant event in its brief history that was handled properly. Nevertheless, someone should erect a tombstone for its passing. On the Boo epitaph: conceived in excess and terminally weakened by delayed launch. Cause of death: style overdose. RIP.

APB News Update

It is with sadness that we learned that APB news (the cybersite dedicated exclusively to crime coverage) has terminated all its 140 employees. They are closing the doors. The money ran out. This site will be missed.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.thestandard.com/article/article_print/1,1153,9702,00.html

http://www.drkoop.com

http://www.ebay.com

(This is the 209th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the Internet. Next, “Jeff Bridges and the Net” is the subject on tap. Stay Tuned. Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of Internet Info for Real People can be found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail comments and suggestions: rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)