Amazon Has Made Itself Indispensable

I was driving into work a few days ago, thinking about two things which Amazon has done which makes it indispensable for me as a shopper:

• Amazon Prime. I pay $79 per year to participate in Amazon Prime. What do I get for my $79? Free two-day shipping. Or one-day shipping for only $3.99. Both with no minimum order amount. And the free two-day and low-cost one-day shipping options are available for literally millions of items.
• Universal Wish List Button. I added the universal wish list button to my browser’s bookmarks toolbar and now I can add anything to my Amazon wish lists from anywhere on the web, even if Amazon doesn’t sell the product! Non-Amazon products I add to my wish lists include a link to the page from where they are sold.

Amazon may have other reasons for offering these programs, but one thing they both do is ensure that I will keep coming back to Amazon.

Whenever I want to buy something, I always look on Amazon first. Why? Because I can get two-day shipping for free. Even when Amazon doesn’t have something, I can add it to my Amazon wish list which means I will come back to Amazon to remember where to buy it. And since I’m an Amazon Prime member, even if I found the product somewhere else, I’m incentivized to at least look for it on Amazon since I can get free two-day shipping!

While I was thinking about these programs and their effectiveness, I began to ask myself what we could do on our ecommerce sites which would make them indispensable to our niche audiences. I haven’t come up with any definitive answers yet, but it’s got me thinking.

What can you do to make your website indispensable to your niche audience?

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