Online Success Means Giving Customers Success

Tuesday November 10, 2009

If w'ere going to sell online successfully, we have to pay special attention to the customer's experience with our website.

Reading Jason Burby's piece How Are You Treating Your Online Customers? (Clickz Today) brought this issue of customer success into focus for me. It's not just a matter of making it easy for customers to find and order products on our websites but a matter of anticipating customers' needs. We have to figure out what our customers' concerns are and take action to allieviate them in advance.

For instance, he says, if sizing is a big concern, we need to take action to help people choose the right size, and ensure them that it's easy and fast to exchange sizes - and build that help into our website.

Zappos, the online shoe retailer, is one of the examples he presents of a company site that gets it right; because they anticipated that many people would be uncomfortable buying shoes online, almost very page of their website announces "Free Shipping Both Ways" to make it clear that if a customer makes a mistake, and wants to return their shoes, it won't cost them.

Other examples he presents include Amazon and Best Buy, both big retailers, but don't miss the point; anticipating customers' needs is something every web retailer needs to consider. If you have trouble doing this yourself, you might enlist the help of friends and family to "test-run" your site or design a brief customer survey for your website visitors.

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