Natalie Myers

Basic Tips for Improving Ecommerce Experiences

March 31st, 2009

About a month ago I had the pleasure of interviewing Tamara Adlin about best practices in improving users’ ecommerce experiences.

She was speaking at Etail West 2009 in Phoenix and I wanted get her insight since she’s been in the field for the past 18 years. She created the Customer Experience services team at Amazon.com.

Here were her Top 3 Tips for Enhancing Users’ Ecommerce Experiences:

Tip #1. Display differentiators and value propositions on the homepage

Adlin says 99% of the sites she sees fail to apply this simple rule. It’s as easy as constructing a simple statement, or bullet points, or a general voice that relays: Welcome. Here’s who we are. Here’s what we sell. Here’s how we’re different. Here’s why you should care. Here’s what you should do.

Tip #2. Look at the site from end-to-end

Companies should get into the habit of clicking through their site every day. Go to the site, click on the sale or promotion creative. Where does it take you? How can you make that process make more sense for the user? How can you give them exactly what they want?

Tip #3. Customer service is the key

Don’t slack on customer service efficiencies. If a customer says the product doesn’t work, invest in a proactive customer service department that offers to expedite a new product immediately. The positive word-of-mouth garnered from that simple gesture is worth thousands of marketing dollars.

Natalie Myers

About Natalie Myers

Natalie Myers writes for MarketingSherpa’s Great Minds and Content Biz newsletters. She covers a broad array of topics for Great Minds, regularly interviewing thought leaders and experienced marketers about innovative or highly successful marketing strategies. For Content Biz she focuses specifically on online subscriptions models, including anything you pay for to read, listen to, watch, rent (as in Software as a Service models), etc.

She writes blog posts about topics relating to her beats, including useful information from interviews that doesn’t make it into an article.

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  1. Saumitra
    April 16th, 2009 at 11:45 | #1

    Natalie,

    You redefined – KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid. Pople put in all those jargons of being a best in class consultant for a service, but never care to explain the rationale behind it..

    short but to the point blog..

  2. Rebekah E. Donaldson (Red)
    April 21st, 2009 at 15:13 | #2

    You’ve presented key tips really clearly and succinctly here Natalie. Saving in the clippings file…

  3. Tamara Adlin
    May 5th, 2009 at 11:51 | #3

    Hi Natalie!
    That was a fun conversation, and I like the way you wrote it up! I’m continuing to blog on this stuff and more over at FellSwoop, where we’re having a lot of fun as we continue to figure out the practical basics of really great user experiences. –Tamara

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