Zappos Top Ten eCommerce Lessons

At the SxSW Interactive festival last week, the CEO of Zappos gave a presentation on the Top 10 Lessons they've Learned about eCommerce. Zappos is one of the largest online retailers around, with gross merchandise sales of over $800M in 2007 and currently stocks more than 3 million shoes, handbags, clothing items and accessories from over 1,100 brands (from Zappos.com). A few of the lessons they've learned:

eCommerce is built on repeat customers.

Word of mouth really works online.

Don't compete on price.

Customer Service is an investment - not an expense!

All of these as well as the other lessons underscore one major theme: Customer Service. Zappos does their best to ensure they not only meet, they exceed customer expectations - so things like Encourage repeat business through awesome customer service. For example, Zappos will often automatically upgrade their customers to overnight shipping when they aren't expecting it, in order to exceed expectations and encourage customers to return to them.