In the traditional world of brick and mortar, the Strouds stores have long been known not only for the quality and depth of selection of their product lines but also for their knowledgable sales force. Customers have come to know and rely on Strouds’ people to provide them with consistently reliable product quality and esthetic advice for their bedrooms, dining rooms, bathrooms and kitchens.

The Strouds web site can offer no less than the traditional stores do themselves. The site has to maintain the Strouds tradition in order to set itself apart from the competition – to give current customers a reason to come back again and again and to recommend the site to their friends. And the Strouds unique qualities also give new customer a site with a real difference that they can appreciate. This quality gives the site what web heads call "stickiness" and you call customer building. People stay at the site longer, come to trust it more and think of it first when they think of buying linens

Yet the site cannot afford to prevent the time-challanged “I-want-it-now” shoppers from going directly to what that want being able to purchase it immediately. Any customer can go directly from any page to buy exactly what they want. They can begin from the home page or from any informational page. The consumer directs his or her own experience, and the environment not only makes it possible, it makes it effortless.

The Strouds site is an example of a termporary e-store building shortcut which has become virtually permanent. Rather than invest in expensive e-commerce software, they decided to use Yahoo-Store which provides their clients with a cookie cutter back end solution. While there are many restrictions in using this type of electronic mall approach, especially in regards to design and fulfillment options, it has proven so profitable, they have had trouble justifying the enormous expense of a complete redesign.

The Strouds site is also an example of transparent dual site hosting practices which are common to this type of e-commerce solution. The main Strouds site is not a functional e-commerce site at all. In fact, when customers press the shop now button, they leave the base Strouds site completely. The change is virtually invisible to the shoppers, but in fact, they are now shopping at Yahoo, not Strouds. Both sites are updated regularly from the Strouds headquarters, and both work together so seamlessly that for all practical purposes, to customers they are both one site.