Customer service has always been a key ingredient of catalogue shopping. Keeping your visitors happy means they will buy from you in the future. Providing a pleasant environment that is easy to use is another way of gaining repeat custom. Online this is achieved by making the web site user friendly and simple to navigate through. Virtually every catalogue shop on the internet follows the same layout, which is to have all the departments laid out at the side and near the top of the web page. This is the industry standard, and has not differed for over 20 years of online shopping.

The best and latest offers are also highlighted in the centre of he home page, usually in the form a banner advertisement that changes deals every 10 seconds or so. Customers can easily see what is on offer this way, and it adds to the shopping experience. The home page is like the shop window, just in virtual reality, so it is very important to create a good first impression or you could lose potential sales. The most successful catalogue companies are those that give the best customer satisfaction. Obviously the prices are a major component of this. People are always attracted to the lowest priced items, and will go out of their way to find them. Everyone likes finding a bargain now and then.

After price comes choice, and there is no better variety of goods than at a catalogue store. They specialise in providing a complete array of items that are all in one convenient place. It is this convenience that makes them so successful. Smaller shops cannot compete with the choice, and so they are less visited on the internet. It also attracts online visitors who don’t want to keep searching through many little stores that so not have such large stock.

Interacting with customers is another way to gain trust and it is becoming more important to success. Videos and buying guides give something back to the buying process, and enable people to make informed decisions before they part with their money. Chat forums are yet another new idea. Before, you just had general forums where people could vent their frustrations to each other if they had a bad experience. It seemed the customer could never get to talk to the company who has wronged them. This has now changed, and the large catalogue companies have open forums where visitors can actually get problems sorted out in a quick and efficient manner. The idea is that the large companies do care about every single customer, and it is true that this has boosted sales and profits.

Customer service is everything to selling things, without it you have little reputation and credibility. The best businesses are built on a solid foundation of trust and innovation. This is very important on the internet because if you don’t keep the customer happy, then someone else will be more than happy to do it for you.