Inventory is expensive.
Have only a showroom with lots of items from groceries to cars and anything between. Anything (that’s available in the warehouse) you buy will be delivered next day at the latest (or picked up by the buyer at a delivery point of their choice.) Delivery is free. No inventory to manage except at the central warehouse. The customer doesn’t have to carry anything home.
Each one of us has a preferred way of organizing things. When we go to an e-commerce (or brick and mortar) store, many times it’s arranged in a way that is not comfortable or intuitive for us.
Have a dynamically changing structure to the way the e-commerce store is presented to the visitor. Use both tracking data and direct input from the visitors to tailor the presentation and structure of products in the store.
Customers don’t want to be bothered, and unless you have the right sales people doing it the right way, you are better off not bothering them until the right time.
Have “get help” button at many places in your store. The shopper should not walk more than a couple of steps to get to such a button. At the same time have no sales people visible at all. When the client presses such a button, a sales person should know where it was pressed and be there in a couple of minutes.
Automatically identify visitors to your store and get insight as to how to deal with them.
Use a video camera, face detection, and online automated and intelligent search. The system monitors the entrance to the store, detects each visitor’s face, does a fast online search based on the picture of their face, gathers the data and analyzes it. Based on that the system will alert the floor staff when particular types of visitors are detected, like someone that might be dangerous, or someone that fits the stores “perfect customer” profile, etc.
Get to know what others think about the shop you’re about to enter.
An augmented reality app that shows you both before going in (by pointing the camera at the shop), and after your already inside (by pointing the camera at different spots in the shop), what others have written about it. General reviews, reviews on specific items, etc. you can, of course, leave you own review.