In Search of E-Commerce, 2nd edition (February 1999) April 2000 note: This report is a bit dated but still useful. Robert Seidman and I first published the report in June 1998, evaluating the customer experience on seven major e-commerce sites: Amazon, CDnow, Expedia, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Dell, and AOL's Shopping area. One takeaway of the report is that even these leading sites had major customer experience problems. Most of the companies bought the report when it was released -- and then, a few months later, five of the sites had fixed many of the errors we had pointed out. So in February 1999 we published this 2nd edition, which shows the improvements that the sites made. I do not claim that "In Search of E-Commerce" alone caused the improvements on those sites; instead, I'm pointing out that even these leading sites are continually improving their customer experience. This is the other takeaway of the report: even if your site is the leader in its market, you still must remain focused on the customer experience. Finally, a plug: Sign up for the weekly Good Experience newsletter, discussing customer experience. I hope you enjoy the report. - Mark Hurst Begin reading the report

In Search of E-Commerce

by Mark Hurst and Robert Seidman

Begin reading the report


Table of Contents

About the 2nd Edition
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Apple
Chapter 3: Dell
Chapter 4: Amazon
Chapter 5: Barnes & Noble
Chapter 6: America Online
Chapter 7: Microsoft Expedia
Chapter 8: CDnow
Appendix A: Outtakes
Appendix B: Creating the Good
Appendix C: About the Authors

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