Running an Internet based business is vastly different than running a traditional bricks and mortar based company. This is particularly true if you are running and Internet based business that deals with end users since, at that point, you are running the Internet equivalent of a retail store.

The first reason it is different has to do with a term we call "conversion rate".  The conversion rate of a traditional store varies but is typically around 5%.  That is, if 20 people visit your store, you can expect for one of them to purchase something. 

The second reason has to do with pure masses of people visiting the store.  A typical store at the mall can expect around 500 people to come into the store.  A WalMart can expect many more.  But nothing can touch a popular website.   Amazon.com gets in the neighborhood of 5 million unique visitors per day.  That's 10,000 times more. 

This changes the customer/company dynamic completely.  In the early days of retail the phrase "the customer is always right" came into being.  This wasn't based on any sort of noble sentiment but rather necessity. In those days, the family store might only get 50 to 100 people visiting - many of whom were repeat customers. You could not afford to alienate even one of them because one unhappy customer could then talk to 20 other people in their neighborhood about their bad experience.

In an Internet based store the "customer being right" never comes up. A good Internet business tries to maximize the number of happy customers and minimize the number of unhappy ones.  On the surface, this might seem similar to the traditional model. But it's not. Internet based companies merely determine how many unhappy customers they can afford to have statistically and find ways to keep that number at or below that number.  It's a totally different system. 

Where traditional stores did not want any unhappy customers. Internet businesses, because they're dealing with so many people, don't aim for that level of perfection. Instead, customer relations becomes a matter of statistical analysis.  There is no face time between customer and merchant.  It's all virtual. And that virtual relationship lends itself to statistical analysis.

Moreover, the fractured nature of the Internet changes the dynamic further. An unhappy customer of an Internet greeting card making site is not going to have the same impact on business as the unhappy customer of the local hardware store because of the lack of a cohesive customer community (i.e. telling your friends and neighbors about the Internet greeting card making provider being bad isn't going to matter much since none of them were likely to go there in the first place).

And as if these differences weren't enough, you have the unique concept of internet store and community intermixing. Now you're dealing with the proprietors of the products and services you may be purchasing.  In a traditional store, your interaction with a clerk or cashier is the equivalent of a search engine or electronic commerce server. The typical customer in a traditional store doesn't have a long, drawn out conversation about the items available for sale.

The net result is that many end users, particularly older ones, haven't yet come to terms that Internet based businesses are run very differently from stores and shops in their local area. The expectations are different. The policies are different. The experiences are different.  It's a brave new world indeed.