Designing Your E-Commerce Site for Service

An e-business stands and falls on its ability to fully service your customer, and to provide you with a cost-effective, reliable and responsive channel for your product or service.

In our previous article, we outlined many of the business-level issues in setting up and running an e-business. In this article, we''re going to drill down and take a look at the components of a working e-business system.

Let''s look at the four main venues in which your e-business will take place.

• The customer''s view - visuals, navigation, content
• The stockroom - catalogs, product information, inventory/resource management
• The back office - payment, customer service, query tracking, order management and delivery
• The boardroom - measuring, planning and managing your business

These views of your business apply whether you are involved in shipping goods as a retailer, or your product is a service you deliver on- or offline. You still have to get your customer to come in, check out your information, find and request what they desire, and pay you for it. You, in turn, must provide that location for your customer, the information they need to make a decision, and the delivery procedures to get the product or service to the customer.

They also apply if your e-business is business-to-business. Of course, in this case, your ''shop'' is not a retail outlet on Main St. - it''s a plush reception room or boardroom where you meet your client, demonstrate your product or service, negotiate terms, timescales and delivery schedules, and seal the deal with a handshake. You will still need the same components - presentation space, product display, production/delivery and management - but you''ll decorate them differently.

So, no matter what kind of business you want to be in start out from the point of view of your customer. Let''s step into the most visible (and in some ways most critical) venue in your e-business -- the shop.