The Internet has brought a lot of business to My1Stop LLC, a Fort Scott, Kan., printing company. About half of its $20 million in annual revenue comes from Web traffic, says Michael Joseph, vice president of e-commerce.
Given those figures, My1Stop can’t afford anything less than a top-notch site. And although it won a 2006 Web Marketing Association award for outstanding achievement in Web site development, its workers know that’s not what drives business.
“The company that takes the best care of the customer is going to win, and e-commerce is not an exception to this rule,” says senior programmer Mike Wulz.
But what does it take to deliver that kind of customer service in cyberspace? Here are 10 steps garnered from those who run and evaluate top corporate Web sites:
1. Build it for users.
Development needs to support what users want, not necessarily what the company wants to promote, says Kerry Bodine, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. “You design with your users in mind at every key decision point,” she says.
It sounds simple, but it often requires a shift in thinking. “Developers are very focused on building the technology and not necessarily looking at whether it makes sense to the user,” says Helen Galasso, vice president of interactive marketing at Coldwell Banker Real Estate Corp. in Parsippany, N.J. “I had a developer say, ‘If [the users] can’t figure out how to use it, then they shouldn’t use it.’ That’s what you have to combat.”
Read more at ComputerWorld.