In the long run, what will give you return business and drive more customers to your site is give your customers value, quality and service. This section of our e-commerce tutorial will help you understand how to create a customer oriented website.

The key to creating a customer oriented website is understanding the needs of your customers. Remember: if people find value in your website and you show that you understand and care about them you will go a long way toward creating a good long lasting relationship between you and your customer.

Acme Tile: The Wrong Way:
A local tile company, lets call it Acme Tile, wants to promote their services on the Internet. They decide to put a simple site on the web that gives their name, address, phone, hours of service. They get a free "hit counter" that tells them how many people have visited their site. After a few months they notice only 5 or 10 people have visited their site and they have not notice any difference in their business. Acme comes to the conclusion that the Internet is a waste of time.

Acme Tile: The Customer Oriented Way
Acme decides not to give up on the net. They purchase some books on Internet business (see our recommended reading list). They read articles such as this e-commerce planning guide or our website design tutorial.

Acme creates a survey form for their in-store customers. They offer a free gift for filling out the form. The form focuses on the reasons the customers buy from Acme Tile and what they value about Acme Tile's services. In addition, the survey announces that Acme is launching a website in order to better serve their customers. They ask customers what information would be of interest to them on the web.

It turns out that many of there customers are do-it-yourselfers. They appreciate Acme Tile's personalized service. Other customers note that they buy from Acme because they carry high quality Italian Tile in addition to discount tile.

Armed with this information, Acme Tile creates a website that will serve the needs of its customers. Here is a brief summary of Acme's site:

Home Page Introducing Acme as a Tile Company Serving both the Do-It-Yourselfer and the Discriminating Purchaser. The home page also contains a small section updated monthly that promotes up coming in-store events and promotions . A step by step tile installation tutorial, complete with illustrations. An on-line material estimator: enter the dimensions of all the rooms you want to tile, and the tile estimator will tell you how much tile, grout, mastic, and other materials you will need. It will also estimate how long it will take based on your skill level. A complete catalog of all of the tile Acme offers with a description, price, and some interesting information about the tile. A section describing the differences between types of tile and marble emphasizing how Acme offers some of the higher quality tiles complete with photos of marble quarries and tile factories in Italy. A customer feedback survey so that Acme can continuously refine their website.

In addition, Acme launches a promotional campaign in order to promote their site. In their weekly newspaper ad, they announce their new exiting website for the do-it-yourselfer. They pass out flyers in the local area, and send out press releases to the Internet section of the local paper.

Amazon.com is one of the most recognized names of the Internet. Their website is an example of everything we have been talking about. It is attractive, engaging, personal and easy to use. Amazon's website is clean and easy to navigate. Amazon's strength does not lie in price alone (they are not the cheapest bookstore on the Internet). They provide plenty of compelling, context sensitive interactive content. You can look at a book, read professional reviews, look at reviews of what other customers think, write your own review. In addition, they suggest other books of interest based on several factors.

For new customers, they walk you through the purchase process. For repeat customers, they have "one-click-shopping" that allows you to purchase books using your address and credit card stored in their database.

On-line security is guaranteed and their privacy policy is clearly spelled out.

We hope that you have found this e-commerce planning guide valuable. You can find more information that may be of value by following the links below. We value your feedback. Click here and send us your comments (You comments are completely confidential see our privacy policy for more information).

We offer a complete line of web-hosting and e-commerce solutions for your business, organization or non-profit. In addition, we can provide you with complete custom e-commerce solutions including website design, marketing strategies and complete custom on-line store-fronts.

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