Chapter 13

E-Commerce: What Would the Big Dogs Do?

Arnold vs. Vincent, Amazon vs. You

What Amazon Does Right Is Not Do It Wrong

Learning from Amazon

Whether you love it or hate it, whether it becomes the world's largest vendor or the Internet's largest flameout, Amazon.com has spent more time and money than probably any other online merchant trying to figure out more ways to sell you stuff online.

The good news is, Amazon does a lot of things right, and we should look at what they're doing and see what elements we can incorporate in our sites. The bad news is, it will be incredibly costly to duplicate all of Amazon's successful e-commerce techniques.

On the other hand, there are a lot of techniques Amazon doesn't use, and we can save ourselves a lot of time and money by not using them, either <g>.

Let's look at what works and doesn't work at Amazon.com.