Bad Spelling Means Bad Sales

Finn Torode
July 18, 2011

Do you click away when you see a misspelled word or a misplaced apostrophe on eBay or Amazon? You’re not alone.

Spelling and grammar mistakes on ecommerce sites are costing millions in online sales, says entrepreneur Charles Duncombe, who runs travel and clothing websites in Britain.

“I know that industry bemoaning the education system is nothing new but it is becoming more and more of a problem with more companies going online,” Duncombe told the BBC. “This is because when you sell or communicate on the Internet, 99 percent of the time it is done by the written word.”

It’s pretty hard to actually measure the effect of spelling mistakes on ecommerce, but Duncombe says revenue per visitor doubled once an error on one of his sites was corrected. When Internet fraud and hacking are such big news events, it’s important to gain the consumers’ trust, and quickly.

“You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website,” Duncombe says.

Duncombe has been backed by Britain’s top business lobby group, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The CBI says almost half of employers aren’t happy with the reading and writing standards of recent graduates they have hired.

Is it a problem here? Hard to tell, but with online retail bringing in $38 million in the last quarter alone it’s probably not a good idea to be taking money away from education, now is it?

Come on, like us—you know you want to.

Today’s top stories, conversation starters, and the back nine business bites.

spotlight on

Handle Your Business

Fresh Views of Your Business