Good article and fair warning to all the Aussie retailers out there. I would also point out that there is a whole new wave of on-line retailing tools that are just coming into play and they may potentially widen that gap even further. Here in the U.S. there are numerous tools that are starting to link on-line shopping to social networks and tools that are bringing visualisation and information aggregation to the on-line shopping experience.

I am familiar with one in particular, through an advisory role, called SmartSymbols http://www.smartsymbols.com/demo.html that brings together a lot of aggregated information right at the point of sale, giving both transparency and confidence in the purchasing choice.

What I would suggest is that Aussie retailers need to go way out beyond the curve and get even newer technologies than are being used today to claw back some of that lost spend, it won’t be enough just to get up to where overseas retailers are now because the best retailers will be well beyond that in another 6 months.

http://www.smartsymbols.com
http://twitter.com/smartsymbols

What you talk about also refers to conversion optimisation, which is knowledge almost non-existent in Australia. Companies outside of Australia invest big dollars in testing their shopping cart processes, website elements in order to determine which will increase their conversion rates and get their maximum return on investment.

So when compared to landing on an Australian website just put together with no reassurances, a difficult process, nothing to make them feel secure and ease them through the process, these users are going to purchase straight from another site that has taken the time to ensure that a users concerns and questions are answered right the way through their purchasing process.