I’m a long-time customer of Trader Joe’s. If you’ve ever been to a Joe’s, you probably agree; there’s not another grocery chain like it. Great (sometimes eclectic) products and great customer service make just about every shopping trip to Joe’s a pleasant experience.

So last week - coming home from a Joe’s trip- I had website design on the brain. A few days earlier I had talked to a friend that was about to embark on a site overhaul, and we chatted on the “must haves” for the new site. What made Joe’s so successful? Could I adapt their successes to my website design notes idea? Here’s what I’m thinking:

What Trader Joe’s does well:

1) Easy-to-navigate store. All the TJ’s I’ve ever visited have a terrific, intuitive store layout. Aisles are never too high, so you can always find what you need, quickly. Is everything in logical order on your website? Are the menus intuitive? Do the hierarchies make sense? Is the information too dense? Bottom line: can your prospects and customers get in and out quickly - finding everything they need?

2) Easy to use. This is a follow-on to easy-to-navigate. Compare a Trader Joe’s store to a typical big box grocery chain. Which one is easier to use? Are there too many products shoved into an already crowded aisle? Are new check stands opened when the lines get too long? Your website has to be easy to use. Too much clutter and Flash (can’t believe how much Flash is still being used) and you’ll lose visitors.

3) Frequent changes to the offering. Trader Joe’s does a really good job in bringing in new products - it’s one of their charms. Making a new discovery is part of the fun of shopping at Joe’s. Sure, probably 90% of their stock is static, but there’s enough change to keep each visit interesting. How often do you make content updates to your site? Search bots (not to mention human visitors) love updates. Refresh content on your site - not drastic changes - Google measures content changes to determine how fresh or how stale a web page is. Note, Google tries to distinguish between real and superfluous content changes. Keep your site fresh and real!

4) Demos. Trader Joe’s offers product samples every day. In fact, each store has a dedicated bar area just for sampling. Not every technology site can have a demo or trial offer, but at a minimum, use a walk-through, recorded webinar,or podcast as an offer.

5) Customer Service. I consider customer service at Trader Joe’s as good as Nordstrom’s. There’s no hyperbole here either. Customer service at Joe’s is fantastic. Maybe it’s the workforce’s attire: t-shirts, Hawaiian shirts, jeans (I’d be happy with that uniform) that make everyone a shiny, happy person. Or maybe the managers have a certain personality they’re looking for, but these grocery store employees are usually very helpful, and go out of their way to make your shopping experience enjoyable. As for your website - can a prospective customer or customer find an FAQ list easily? Does the FAQ make sense? Are the most important questions answered there, or was the list a check-off on a long laundry list of must-haves back when you were designing the site? If you have a search engine function, does it work correctly? How many times have you been to a site where a query on the most basic of terms, yields a horrendous and dated response?

Lastly, if information can’t be found on the site, how easily can someone contact a support or sales rep? Do you promise an answer within 24 hours? Is someone manning the phones?

I’m sure there are other lessons your site can learn from Trader Joe’s that I’ve missed. Please comment them.