Before I boarded my flight this morning, I scrolled through my Twitter feed and came across a tweet by @ZDNet that said: "Why Amazon is winning online retail and should fold on this silly sales tax fight http://zd.net/p4R22J." Interesting! Okay, maybe I'm showing bias here. After all, we at Tealeaf have made our careers out of caring about which sites serve their customers the best, which are easiest to use, which cause their customers the least amount of struggle, and which are, in the end, winning at what they do. That said, I'm not really up on this whole sales tax issue. So I clicked on the link, only to be let down by the realization that the author of the post thinks that free and reduced shipping for Amazon Prime customers was the reason Amazon's winning online retail!
Now, I think free shipping is great and it definitely shows a dedication to customer service (e.g., Zappos), but aren't there other aspects of the online shopping experience that might factor into a retail site being proclaimed as the one that's winning online retail?
A few that come to mind include:
Now, I think free shipping is great and it definitely shows a dedication to customer service (e.g., Zappos), but aren't there other aspects of the online shopping experience that might factor into a retail site being proclaimed as the one that's winning online retail?
A few that come to mind include:
- Dedication to discovering and fixing all the little things than can cause customers to churn through the online shopping process
- Seamless communication between call center agents and the website
- Implementing a fully functional mobile site or smartphone app that works as well as the website
- And, most fundamental of all, taking a customer-centric view to all online channels—from site design to application flow to check-out process
