People are sometimes bottle-necks.

A while back I was interviewing a candidate for a Web Operations Manager position and I asked something along the lines of, “What do you like most about working with the web?” While there were many reasons for asking this question, my main objective was to provoke a conversation.  I wanted this person sitting in front of me who has a wealth of knowledge on paper to share that knowledge with me. Isn’t this what is suppose to happen in an interview? This one interviewee, who stuck out more than anyone else said, “Because if I make a mistake I can instantly fix it.” Surprisingly, my facial expressions showed how I was really feeling. “Really?!”  We live in a world where we can make changes almost instantly online. Technology changes, we make tweaks, add products, remove products, change images, change text, increase bids and contact someone on the other side of the world in a matter of seconds. With technology constantly evolving, we change our expectations. We expect humans to react the same way technology reacts; we expect them to change instantly. Truth be told, humans are not always as evolving as technology. While there is a laundry list of features and advancements you could potentially add to your website, timing has a lot to do with the success of any change. Seasonality effects the way consumers spend and even how they interact with the internet. People are sometimes the bottle-necks in change.  

As an e-retailer sit back and ask yourself, “Can our customers handle this sort of change?” If not, how can you educate or assist in the learning curve your customer may experience? Believe it or not there are still many people out there who still don’t know how to add numbers to their cell phones.