The company has been selling electronics to consumers via catalogs since 1974, but since launching its Web site in 1995, Crutchfield has become super-serious about customer service and delivery. The front end is the easy part. Expecting online order volume to double during the holidays to 1,000 orders per day, Crutchfield has added Web servers and load-balancing capabilities to handle the traffic. To help it move orders quickly, Crutchfield has also improved the efficiency of its distribution center by equipping workers with handheld computers that tell them where to find merchandise in the warehouse. The company develops applications with Microsoft Visual Basic tools and runs them on Microsoft NT Server and a SQL database.
Customers can track the status of the order online or by phone.
It's a tricky calculation that depends on manufacturers and carriers who are sometimes overseas. The online shopping experience this season will set the tone for Web commerce for the year to come. While Web retailers say investments in technology and some fancy footwork will help them meet consumer expectations, it's still anyone's guess whether they'll avoid the missteps made by Handspring and others. But having a strong logistics system in place is one way for E-retailers to hedge their holiday bets.