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To further expand
human dimension, you can add forums and chat rooms. Provide a variety of means to acquire visitor input. On site surveys and questionnaires, email surveys and opinion polls can not only increase your customers' sense of being in contact with real people who value their opinions and ideas, but also provide exceptionally useful information for refining your marketing and sales tactics. Loyalty programs and affinity networks can also help.
This is a lot like beating a real dead horse, but... Reliability and security are crucial. If your eCommerce site is big enough and busy enough, multiple parallel servers, redundant hardware, use of fail-safe technology, fast technical support service, high quality encryption, valid certificates, high quality payment processors and excellent firewalls will all allow you to ensure your customers that their data is safe, their orders are handled properly and nobody's getting their credit information that shouldn't. Many people still are extremely hesitant to purchase on-line because of fears of identity and/or credit card theft. You can't ignore this issue and hope to succeed.
Right now you may not need (or want to pay for) parallel servers, redundant hardware and fail-over technology, but don't ignore
rest. You depend on your eCommerce hosting provider to keep your business running. So think carefully and do some serious research. Overloaded servers, lack of redundant network connections, slow technical support, poor backup procedures can create a nightmare situation for both you and your customers
As a final consideration for this part, smooth out your customer contact and support procedures. If multiple staff might come into contact with your customers (chat, phone or email) , providing all of them with
same (and useful) information about
customer, prior orders, any previous or current problems and so forth, can avoid a lot of potential frustration - and lost orders or, worse, a customer lost forever.
It can be incredibly irritating to have to tell
same story over and over, getting bounced from one person to another when no information ever seems to have been recorded. While it may cut down on repeat complaints, that's usually because
customer is gone forever. Construct your systems so that no information is lost and so that
data needed to be responsive and helpful is instantly available. In doing this consider that some information which customers may not feel comfortable about everyone knowing should be restricted to those who would actually need it.
Doing these things right can add significant credibility and usability to your online business, as well as build a loyal customer base which actually enjoys dealing with your eCommerce business. When you reach that stage, you're there -
true win-win situation that's makes an outstanding eCommerce web site.

Richard teaches, trains and consults, on and off-line, on business and professional presentations, eCommerce, site building and programming. And writes a lot. Visit http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites.com for articles, information, resources and links and check our blog at http://www.Building-eCommerce-Websites/blog for opinion and ideas.