One of the primary focuses of any business is identifying customer needs.  Without knowing what your customer is after, how can you offer them a compelling reason to spend their time and money with you?  Every year companies across the globe invest millions of dollars into research, research, and more research in an attempt to do just that.

The thing that sets a successful company apart from the masses is the way they use the information gathered from that research.  I've seen the same story time again:  a company invests in research or conducts a study… the information is passed on to various departments within the company… and like a bill going before the United States Congress, there it dies.  So many companies never act on the information they gather and it's repeatedly made me wonder what the point of the research is.

Internet Retailer has a brief summary of the success ShoeMall.com had by taking information that the company learned about its customers and putting it use.

The online shoe retailer said that their research had told them two things:  1) The website could be easier to use and 2) People were having a hard time narrowing down the plethora of options available at the site.  So in response, ShoeMall.com completely redesigned their website with a heavy emphasis on usability.  And because of that change, live support chats on the site have dropped 50-75%.  Why?  Because, as the company's Internet Director told Internet Retailer, the website is just much easier to use… so customers need less help.

To tackle the challenge presented by the company's vast inventory, ShoeMall partnered with Fry Inc to create a brand new tool called "Shoe Finder".  Shoe Finder, which sits front and center on the company's website, allows customers to display only shoes for a certain sex, of a certain size, and within a certain price range.  With a few clicks of the mouse, customers can see only the shoes they'd be interested in buying.

These two changes, combined with a new print catalog, have helped the company boost sales by 44% to $63.8 million in 2006.

So if you think your company could benefit from a 44% increase in sales, follow ShoeMall's example and put that customer research to use!