Another thing Amazon.com does very well is that it remembers your shopping cart. If you add something to your shopping cart today and then you go back to Amazon.com four months later, that item will still be there. That's a very smart move on their part, and it's a feature I use all the time. I will often see products that interest me, so I'll put those items in the shopping cart and save them up for one larger order made up of multiple products.
Many online retailers are flat-out incompetent in their use of shopping-cart technology. They will actually delete your shopping cart within minutes if you don't complete your order right away. It's a very simple programming trick to preserve the shopping cart and I don't know why more online retailers don't do it.
That's not only smart marketing on their side; it's also a form of permission marketing that greatly respects the customer and their privacy. I think Amazon.com has found exactly the right balance between customer profiling and customer privacy. Personally, I'm very happy with the way I'm treated as an Amazon.com customer.
It's one of those behind-the-scenes features that most users don't really value for its achievements. A search function, when done right, sort of disappears into the background and doesn't make itself too obtrusive. You use it, it gives you the results you want, and it goes away -- and that's exactly what the Amazon.com search function does. I can't tell you how many other online retailers have lost my business simply because their search function was flat-out horrible. You type in what you're looking for and, even when they carry that product, their built-in search engine can't even find it. So, if you really want a good-quality search function, then go to Amazon.com. I think it's the best online retailer in the business.
I also love Amazon's prime program, which is a program where you pay a flat annual fee to get free second-day shipping on (almost) everything you order for the next year. I must have saved hundreds of dollars on shipping by now thanks to that program. It's not only a cost-saving feature for users who buy a lot of products online, it's also a great customer loyalty function for them, because now, if I'm comparing two different online retailers who carry the same product, I'm always going to choose Amazon.com because the shipping is going to be free. Most likely, when I buy one product with Amazon, I won't stop there. I usually pick up some other recommended items at the same time.
Why did I go with Amazon? Because they gave me the information I needed to have confidence in the fulfillment of that order. To me, $50 was worth knowing that I was going to get the product on a certain day and that the product was really in stock. You see, when an online retailer gets it right, they can actually afford to charge more because they are adding value to the product through supporting information such as inventory statistics, shipping time and even customer reviews of the product, which are, of course, a mainstay of Amazon.com.
By the way, if you've read much of my work, you know that I don't compliment companies very often. In fact, most of my writing is critical of what I see in the world, because I'm really looking for peak performance. I'm looking for examples of companies and individuals who get things right and who succeed at a level that's not typical. When I say that Amazon.com is impressive I genuinely mean it. It's a compliment that the company has earned, not one that it has paid me to say.
In fact, I should mention that even though Truth Publishing is currently signed up as an Amazon.com affiliate, there are no affiliate links in this article, thus there's absolutely no financial incentive for me or anyone at Truth Publishing to say these things about Amazon.com because there are absolutely no affiliate links on this page. This is just an honest review of a company that I think deserves some accolades for doing online retailing right, and I will continue to give Amazon.com the majority of my online purchasing business as long as they continue to offer the products I'm looking for and continue to give me the information that will help me make well-informed purchasing decisions.
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