Too many companies start their their online shopping experience with how the company is set up. Corporate organizational charts (focused on the inside view) take over the web solutions. Commerce stores are set up in the same silos that the company uses for financial reporting purposes. You can almost tell the organizational chart by their sales solutions.

Our experience with financial service companies finds that products and services are typically separate entities in the corporation. As a result customers need to self-select into the types of products that make sense for them. So depending on the level of knowledge a customer has, or the entry point to the site, or the targeted advertising banner rate quote, the customer quickly gets to a solution – just maybe not the best solution for them.

So how does a company understand that the potential site visitor needs to finance his daughters wedding? That ‘product’ doesn’t exist on a bank site. The solution may come from an “Any Day” loan, or an Equity product or a Card Product or some sort of unsecured borrowing that can only happen when the bank listens to the need. That kind of listening can only happen by improving customer relationships.

If you are trying to improve your site for the Holidays you have probably missed the window for a major redesign effort which could improve your online relationships. But what you do have time for is improving what you have right now.

This Holiday season more companies intend to improve their relationships with some old fashioned technology – and still the only ‘killer app’ – email. In a recent WebTrends survey 80% of retailers stated that regular customer email is their preferred method for building relationships.

There are tons of email marketing sites that can help improve yours, but this recent article shows 3 successful ways to improve response without using discounted prices as the driver. Make your emails relevant; Time them to the season’s buying habits; and take advantage of key repurchase behavior. Repurchase behavior is key since it means you know about your customers.

More companies improved customer relationships this year with the addition of live chat and personalized promotions. Look at Bank of America’s Mortgage. The minute you land on those pages, a liveperson pop-up asks if you need assistance now. Liveperson did small sample interviews that showed users spend an average of 20 hours online each week and that 17% of the time is dedicated to research and comparison of products. Those shoppers spend more than $1000 online each year.

Customer relationships are expensive to start and invaluable to improve on. Use the information you have right now to improve yours. Why do customers buy from you in the first place? What parts of your site are most popular? Are there repeat sales of similar items? Do your customers ask for items that you have but can’t be found on your site? Can you cross-promote similar items better by using existing customer data? How can you better solve the needs of site visitors?

Someone once said that web users can really only do 4 things on any web site: Research, Purchase, Entertain themselves or Flee.

Help your customers research and purchase from you. See if you can’t speed up their getting information from you. Conduct a series of conversations with them through email or personalized content on your site. Use your ears and listen to what they need. Do everything you can to avoid the last of the 4. Flight means no return.

Take the steps to make sure your customers enjoy their Holidays.