I bet you read a lot of stuff about e-commerce. I sure do. Most articles I find out there are about marketing on the web: how to advertise effectively with banners and click-throughs, how to promote yourself through e-mail and newsletters, how to succeed in driving lots of consumer traffic to your site. And who isn’t trying to attract customers and build the bottom line? But every time I read this stuff, I start thinking about horses: how you can lead them to water but can’t make them drink, and how you shouldn’t go putting carts before them.

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet. Before you go blowing your marketing budget (and more) on increasing traffic to your site, make sure your best dollars have gone into designing and maintaining a site that isn’t going to be a dead-end for your traffic. First take care of what your customer wants: simple navigation, a sense of security, easy and intuitive processes, lots of help, great customer service – a comfortable, familiar, delightful shopping experience!

Put the horse before the cart, and those horses will be much more inclined to drink the water you’ve led them to.