We will continue to invest in systems, people and product expansion, each of which helps us better serve customers ... For the rest of this year we expect to invest more heavily than we have in the past.”

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com made this quote back in 1999. We are all familiar with Amazon and its tremendous success over the past several years. Even though Amazon is not as profitable as it would like to be, they definitely did one thing right – and that was to create one of the most recognized online brands in the world. Their website is one of the most well-known and trusted websites to purchase products from on the Internet and every product company would love to replicate what Amazon has done in just 12 years in business.

Looking at the Amazon website - how is it that they are able to sell millions of products while maintaining a website that is user-friendly, easy to navigate and generating millions of dollars a day in online sales? The answer lies in their core back-end applications and advanced content management (CMS) technology. If you really want to get into it, I believe Amazon is more of a technology company than they are a product company because of the number of advanced systems, developers, networks and applications required to run and operate their online business; however, I’ll leave the further explanation of this theory for another article.

Now let’s go back and review Jeff Bezos’ quote one more time – “We will continue to invest in systems, people and product expansion, each of which helps us better serve customers...” So what Mr. Bezos is suggesting is that in order to improve Amazon’s user experience, they must focus on investing more in technology that will allow them to continually increase the product selection on their website. As owners of our business, we should take this valuable knowledge and experience from Jeff Bezos and apply it to our own product-driven websites. If we want to increase sales, simplify our business, and improve our user’s experience, we must forever focus on product expansion.

Implementing a content management system for your website will allow you to easily maintain your products as you focus to expand your business online. A CMS will allow one or more administrators of your website to prepare and publish information, without the need to create and manage HTML coding. By using a CMS and focusing on product expansion, you will increase sales, enhance your user’s experience and minimize resources, while effectively and efficiently managing your product-driven website.

I highly recommend considering some type of CMS to help manage products on your website. If you want to stay competitive and develop a stronger business, you must operate like Amazon and continually invest in systems, people and product expansion - each of which will help you to better serve your online customers.

At Hudson Horizons, we provide website design, development, content management, e-commerce integration, RSS content distribution, search engine optimization, e-marketing services and the development of custom applications such as blogs, newsletter systems, online payment solutions and any other Web application that may be needed to help simplify your business.

Hudson Horizons is an e-business product, solution and marketing company specializing in creating highly sophisticated customized websites, web-based software applications and providing e-marketing and SEO services for small and mid-sized businesses.

Our vision and ultimate ambition as a company is to always strive to be "The New Light for e-Business." By offering new, innovative and extremely competitive products and solutions to our clients, we provide better ways to run and operate a business online.