E-Commerce Start-Up Parentgiving.com Makes Internet Retailer Hot 100 List

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We felt that seniors and their caregivers were indeed on the web, despite the prevailing theory that elders are not computer savvy.

Montclair, New Jersey (PRWEB) December 7, 2009

Before even reaching its first anniversary, parentgiving.com, an education and e-commerce site aimed at adults caring for their aging parents, was selected as one of this year's Hot 100 Best Retail Websites by Internet Retailer, joining an elite group of esteemed online stalwarts like Apple, Amazon and Zappos. "Being online for less than a year, with no brick-and-mortar store as a launching pad, we are honored to be in this kind of company," said parentgiving.com CEO Keith Maddox. "We appreciate being recognized for bringing the same level of innovation to our website as these online pioneers, including a huge selection, easy navigation on a beautifully designed site and the highest level of customer service."

The companies that made this year's list used novel ways to earn customer loyalty and engage customers in a downturned economy, explained Internet Retailer editor-in-chief Don Davis. Chosen in the "specialty" retailer category, parentgiving.com satisfied the key criteria, starting with this important rule: "The merchant must know exactly what its customers are looking for" and offer "innovative ways to provide the information that its particular customers need."

The Internet Retailer report outlined 10 successful strategies that made parentgiving.com and this year's other winners stand out in a very crowded field. At the top of the list are:

• Connecting with customers by making the site and its social features exciting. "We made a concerted effort to create an online community when we first launched," says Scott La Londe, web operations director. "We felt that seniors and their caregivers were indeed on the web, despite the prevailing theory that elders are not computer savvy." Parentgiving.com offers blogs on topics from real-time caregiving experiences to shopping information on how to choose the right products.
• Being a source of expert information: parentgiving.com contributors include a network of care managers, elder care experts, doctors and nutritionists who lend their knowhow to the hundreds of original articles.
• Making navigation more useful. Parentgiving's over 1500 products are grouped into 10 categories and dozens of subcategories to allow shoppers to easily find what they need, and buying guides that highlight product features.
• Making tough purchases easy. Shopping for items like adult incontinence diapers is not only potentially embarrassing, it's also amazingly confusing. Parentgiving.com's director of customer service Nicky Silverstein simplified the process by creating a proprietary adult diaper selector that enables customers to narrow their search by a variety of features. What's more, customer service is handled the old-fashioned way, with live people at the Parentgiving.com offices in New Jersey, as well as the new-fashioned way, with web chats.

In addition to innovative e-tailing, parentgiving.com and the other Hot List sites were evaluated using Gomez performance testing methodology with measurements taken once per hour from 10 data center locations with standard 10 megabit-per-second connections to the Internet. These were calculated 24 hours a day for one week in early November. Criteria included response time (the total end-to-end time required to fully download a home page and its entire image, Flash, style sheets, JavaScript and other HTML components), availability (the percentage of times a home page is successfully downloaded) and consistency rating, a quality ranking.

For more on parentgiving.com, contact Julie (at) parentgiving.com or call 973-746-2582 x. 401. Parentgiving.com also hosts various specialty stores for senior care products including http://www.AdultDiapers.net and http://www.BedRailsForSeniors.com.

This press release was distributed through PR Web by Senior Care Marketer (SeniorCareMarketer: http://www.SeniorCareMarketer.com) on behalf of the company
listed above.

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