Whatever you’re selling online, the big retailers have an enormous number of advantages over you.  They can buy in bulk and offer cut-rate discounts.  They have advertising and promotion budgets that would dwarf your whole operation.  And yet, somehow, online retail businesses continue to prosper and thrive.

Somehow, someway, online sellers like yourself are taking customers away from the big guys.  What’s going on?

There are indications that personalization and interactivity have a lot to do with it.  Even online, consumers want the friendly, personal touch.  This is something you’re in a position to offer that the larger retailers often skimp on.

If you’ve ever tried to get personal assistance online from a big retailer, you’ve probably got some horror stories to tell.  As a cost cutting measure, large corporations have a bad habit of cutting down their customer service staff.  Keeping an eye too closely on the bottom line, they talk themselves into thinking that a few staff in a central call center can handle all of their customers’ needs.

Or, worse, they’ll outsource their customer service to a third party who, however well intentioned and hard working, can simply not be emotionally invested in the success of their clients.

This is your big opportunity!  You can offer the warm, personal, and interactive shopping experience that the big guys have opted out of.  Your challenge is to use automation wisely so your customer service doesn’t become the cold, detached practice that many of the big retailers offer.

When you’re creating your own website, try to offer as many interactive tools as you can.  You can start small at first, and, as your website evolves over time, add the interactive tools that seem to suit your business best.  When you’re setting up your e mail autoresponder, don’t let it become a robot, sending the same e mail over and over again to everyone on your list, regardless of what any given customer’s profile with you may be.

Your inexpensive website hosting should be able to offer you more tools, advice, and best practices.  There are more that you can find by searching online yourself—this is shopping that you can do, looking for the next fun, interactive tool you can add to your site; the next great way to connect in a personal way with your customers.

And it should be fun, for you as well as the customer.  Dressing up your online storefront and associated landing pages with interactivity is fun! –Even if you’re paying someone else to do the actual design and coding.  Connecting personally with customers is fun, too, and your friendliness and warmth will earn you valued customer loyalty and, hopefully, increased sales.

Don’t forget that this doesn’t come to you just by dint of being a small, online business.  Some of your colleagues are guilty of offering as cold and callous a customer service experience as the big retailers.

I recently needed new bicycle pedals, and I wanted to treat myself and spend some money on really good ones.  I found some I thought would be a good fit, but I wasn’t sure if they would work with the toe clips I had picked out.  The online retailer—a small, local shop that had expanded its business to the Web—e mailed me back, telling me that I would need to modify the new, expensive pedals myself.

I wasn’t about to spend a lot of money on new pedals and then hack them myself—I’m not that talented!  So I emailed the store back and asked for their recommendation for upscale pedals and toe clips that would work together out of the box.  They responded with a succession of e mails cajoling me to just go ahead and buy the (wrong) pedals I had already picked out.

Instead, I settled on a cheaper set and bought them—from somebody else.

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