There's good news, and bad news: yes, it is possible to make e-commerce work for you, but it takes more of the hard work you've already put into the company you founded. While clear "best practices" are emerging, according to Mike Carlson, Manager of Partner Sales for SPS Commerce, their application isn't automatic or easy yet.

The problem: data

To win at e-tailing starts with the same focus you already know: good care of your consumers. Good customer service in e-commerce is based on well-managed data flows in a way that's different from face-to-face transactions, though. "You're dealing with the 'Amazon effect'," Carlson emphasizes: Amazon has taught on-line customers to expect the simplicity, responsiveness, and care that make Amazon a retailing leader.

To make purchases simple for customers is a lot of work behind the scenes, of course. There are plenty of good e-commerce packages and implementors in the marketplace. However appealing and fast their screen displays, a good experience for end users requires the right data. That means, in the first place, an accurate, current item data feed, so that your on-line catalogue is trustworthy. If descriptions are badly written, or technical specifications full of typographical errors, prospective customers will simply move on to your competitors, and not return.

The item data feed is only the beginning. With that in place, your next priority is the inventory data feed. Consumers want to know: "if I push the 'Buy' button now, when does my purchase show up in my hands?" That demands real-time inventory management, of course. Depending on your logistics, that might mean communication with one warehouse, your entire vendor book, or any level between those two extremes.

This is where the real complexities of e-tailing data feeds begin to emerge: even if you already have good inventory management and e-tailing programs that you trust, their integrationis almost certainly a major milestone. Standardization of data feeds has not progressed to the point yet that you can expect to be able to buy the parts "off the shelf" and have them work together. Integration will almost certainly be required.

"Data integrity" stretches many organizations. It requires a different mentality than other projects. As big a challenge as bringing your first Web site up, it's at least relatively tangible--if something isn't right, you can point to a screen and show your development team what needs to change. To manage data feeds across departments or organizations is a more abstract chore, and simultaneously more of a marathon than a sprint. Your people and systems need to work every day to ensure that the product descriptions, availability, and prices that your customers see are accurate.

When you're successful with integration of these sorts of data feeds, another challenge arises. Carlson notes that the easy availability of prices through your Web site usually results in "margin compression for [the] brick-and-mortar" side of your business. As unwelcome as those losses are in isolation, they're part of the strategic expansion into e-tailing.

Prices-and-inventory are much the most important datafeeds for beginning e-tailers. Once your organization is good with those, you'll move into intermediate-level datafeeds. One clear trend, already spreading from airlines and hotels, is differential or dynamic pricing. As your e-tailing expands, you'll want to feed it real-time data on customers and, eventually, competitors!

As unfamiliar and even jarring as some of these possibilities appear from the perspective of traditional retailing in physical space, the unifying principle behind them all is to make the most of your relationships with customers. Can your shoppers trust the details on price, shipping, and availability you provide? If not, they simply won't return. Make purchases easy and reliable, though, and you'll build goodwill just as you've already done in your real-world stores.