4Cs of building an e-commerce brand

what it takes to build a succesful e-commerce brand/business?

E-Commerce is still in a very nascent stage, US e-commerce sales are just 5.5% of the total retail sales. And it is very clear from the early signals available that e-commerce is bound to grow exponentially in coming months/years. We are also witnessing a huge growth in number of e-commerce startups and VC funding in this space. However, very few of these promising startups survive. I feel that e-commerce companies need to provide all of the following to their customers to compete against the incumbent brands/retailers.

1. Customer Experience: Customer Experience is key to ensuring that customers keep coming back to your site to buy more and also recommend it to their friends and family. Rule of thumb: if a customer has three good consecutive experiences then they will never go anywhere else for shopping. (Amazon, Zappos have done great job with this). Customer Experience includes user experience on the website (discovery, payment etc), product selection, delivery and after sales support (including returns). Few products have challenge of consumer wanting to try/touch/feel them before buying (creating near real-life experience). Warby Parker has a program where customers can take a picture of themselves and try out different sunglasses on their image - close to real-life (seeing yourself in mirror) experience.
2. Cost: One of the main reasons why Amazon grew really fast was because there were no sales tax on online transactions. Cost will always be a big factor (alongwith free returns) for people to shop online and buy products that they wouldn’t have otherwise bought without physically trying it.($95 sunglasses on warbyparker as compared to $150+ on Rayban etc)
3. Customization: Internet makes it super easy to remove middleman and make it easier for companies to customize products to meet individual user’s requirements by either carrying lot more SKUs (Since they dont have to necessarily stock up) or by actually customizing the end product for user (shoesofprey)
4. Content : One of the key to building a great brand is to become influencer in that space. A successful brand not only sells great products but also helps its customers build opinion and buy products by creating original content. Companies should use social networks like Twitter, Facebook , Pinterest and their own blogsite to engage with their customers.Partnering with existing influencers in the target industry could be a good place to start.