Making the online shopping experience smooth and satisfying is how Amazon survived the dotcom bubble of the early aughts and prevailed to become one of the most powerful companies in the world. Assortment optimization and product positioning are two essential elements to smoothing out e-commerce – sometimes recommendations are so good that customers didn’t even know they wanted the second item until they saw it.

And finally, retailers need to adopt an intelligent dynamic pricing model governed by automated software. Amazon does it, scanning every competing site it can, ingesting product and pricing data, and altering its prices to levels optimized for making sales. The lowest price isn’t always the best price, so the repricing software needs to identify the best fit for the retailer. Don’t forget: Amazon can afford to drop prices as much as it wants.