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When you offer customers the ability to place an order online, adherence to certain norms or standards is a necessity for the success of e-commerce deployment.
Think of e-commerce as a way of summarizing the promise you make to potential customers, the promise that you’ll adhere to customers’ unspoken expectations.
What kind of expectations accompany e-commerce? Here are just some of the norms that seem to unconsciously govern online shopping:
1. Customers expect that companies will make purchasing online as easy as possible.
2. Customers expect that companies will send order confirmation emails upon purchase.
3. Customers expect that companies will send tracking information upon shipping.
4. Customers expect that companies will be 100 percent accurate with what is shipped.
5. Customers expect that companies will be held responsible if products arrive damaged.
Think that these expectations are a bit rigid? Consider your own experiences with shopping online and what frustrates you.
Three-week lead times? Not acceptable.
Received the wrong product? Not acceptable.
Product arrived damaged? Not acceptable.
Customers’ expectations are high and while many ecommerce platforms will promise you that their solutions will “handle” most of this for you, the success or failure of ecommerce deployment doesn’t hinge on the platform alone.
Success or failure of ecommerce deployment starts in the planning stages when you...