Sams Teach Yourself E-Commerce Programming with ASP in 21 Days

Day 12. Letting Customers Track Their Orders

After customers place orders at your store, it is important to provide them with a method of tracking their orders. Enabling customers to track their own orders has two major benefits.

First, providing customers with a method of tracking orders lowers customer service costs. If a customer becomes anxious about the status of an order, instead of telephoning you or your customer service department, the customer can check on the order at your Web site. Human time and effort is expensive. Whenever possible, you should automate customer service tasks.

A second benefit to enabling customers to track their orders is that it draws customers back to your Web site. If a customer knows that he can view the status ...