Five features e-tailers should incorporate into their online businesses

[mandy]

The fact that we have to run as fast as we can just to keep up only begs the question of which direction we should go. Now that our online stores stay up pretty much all the time and all the standard shopping functions, i.e. search, browse, product detail pages, cart and checkout, function reasonably well, what should be at the top of today's list? To answer this, it helps to understand why, like the Red Queen, we run like mad but don't seem to get ahead.

The reason is simple competition: While you're racing away building newer and better features and generally improving your online shopping, so are your peers. As soon as someone manages to pull ahead with set of "killer features," everyone else races to emulate the same functionality. The beneficiary of all this effort is, of course, the consumers, whose shopping experiences have been getting steadily better and better. However, consumers are nothing if not demanding, and their expectations keep rising as fast as we can possibly run.

So, to keep up or get ahead of the competition, here is what I see as the top five must-have features -- features not standard in your e-commerce platform -- as you plan for 2009.

1. Interactive Merchandising...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/The-Red-...63719.html