As a retailer, it’s almost a necessity that you do something that enables consumers to shop with you online. They’ve come to expect it, almost as much as they expect to be able to call your company and get customer service questions answered.
But that’s a huge difference from even just a decade or two ago. In that time, the internet and the availability not just of products but of online payment opportunities, has radically altered the shopping and customer landscape. In fact, if you can remember, online shopping used to be TV shopping: People would watch channels such as the Home Shopping Network, call into a toll-free number, place an order with a credit card, and that was it.
Amazon, which seems to be just part of our cultural landscape, didn’t actually even exist a quarter-century ago, and even then it was just about books. How else have things changed? This graphic explains it.
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