by Steven Strauss

There are many ways to have your website take off and make money. Traditional business mottos tell you to buy low and sell high, or to remember that the customer is always right. But in the brave new e-world, I think that there should be a new business maxim: Imitate Amazon.

If you do what Amazon.com does, you can’t go wrong. Of all online merchants, Amazon.com is the site and the business that does it right.

So, today we present the cyber-rules of the Amazon jungle:

1. Value the customer above all else. Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has repeatedly stated that he endeavors to make Amazon the most customer-centric business in the world, and a visit to the site confirms this. Amazon offers great customer service. It knows that responsiveness is the key to making online shoppers feel comfortable.It is important to realize that ordering online is different than purchasing something in a store, where you see the actual goods and get to take them with you after your purchase. Online, you can’t touch the actual products and you don’t talk to a real salesperson. You just cough up your credit card number, make your purchase, and send your order off into cyberspace, hoping for the best. For many people, it still seems like a proposition based on faith. So the first secret to getting customers to order from you, as Amazon has proven, is to convince them that you won’t let them down.Amazon first does so by immediately sending you an email confirming your order and telling you when they expect to ship it. Then, when your order does ship, they send you another e-mail with your tracking number. You should do the same; it creates confidence in your store. (Some e-commerce software builds this function right into the software, such as Yahoo! Store for example.) Like Amazon too, you should try and ship quickly and offer returns and refunds.If a customer has a problem, Amazon also responds quickly. For example, I ordered a book from Amazon a week ago and it took them a day longer than anticipated to ship my order. It confirmed my belief in the site when they e-mailed me, saying that they upgraded my order to a “priority” mail shipment because of the “delay.” I got the package the next day. It is things like that which build loyalty.
2. Make shopping easy and pleasant. Amazon has a “three-click” policy that dictates that if a customer can’t accomplish what they want to within three clicks, then the system isn’t working right. Imitate Amazon and make shopping at your store simple too.By the same token, Amazon’s pages are clean and professional. Their use of images, for example, is prudent: never too many, nor too big, so the pages don’t take long to load. They know that their job is to give you the chance to find what you want quickly and easily and to be able to purchase it without a hassle.
3. Offer plenty. What is Amazon? Now, besides being “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore,” it seems to be earth’s biggest store. When you too have a big inventory it tells your customers that you are here to stay and that they will be able to find what they want if they go to you first.
4. Offer great prices. A big reason that people shop online is because they think they will find prices that can’t be beat. That is certainly true at Amazon, and it should be true for your store as well.

While few of us have the resources to totally imitate Amazon, the spirit of the site is one to emulate. You might not become a billionaire, if you remember to Imitate Amazon, you will at least be on you way.