Over the past months Domino’s Pizza has launched and polished it’s Pizza Tracker. Not only is it easy to build your order and add your coupons, but now the process after your order is revealed. The tracker excels at showing you when the order was placed, who received the order, who made your pizza, who put the pizza in the oven, when the pizza came out of the oven, who boxed it and who is delivering the pizza to your door, by name. A “progress bar” fills from left to right at each step. There’s no more doubt in the process, and employee accountability for each step in the process is now transparent to the customer. My kids, who eagerly await a pizza delivery, and frequently ask when it will arrive, are now referred to the Pizza Tracker for a minute by minute update. As a customer, I know the name of everyone who touched my order, when they did their job and how long it took them. After receiving the order, I can rate how the process was through the Pizza Tracker interface.

Domino’s isn’t resting on this success. This summer, Domino’s co-branded the Pizza Tracker with the Warner Brothers’ blockbuster film, The Dark Knight. During this election season, the pizza tracker is asking customers their party affiliation, who they would vote for and if they plan on showing up at the polls. In addition, national maps show customers what the popular recent orders are, and which section of the country like which pizza or sandwich best. These maps demonstrate a critical mass of enthusiasm for Domino’s to the customer, showing them national participation and popularity of the products they consume.

How can you transform your offline ordering process to an exceptional online ordering process? What are the current challenges or customer hangups with your online ordering experience? When was the last time you asked your customer about their online experience? How can you then turn a weakness (such as the doubt of whether the pizza order was actually received) into a strength (where you know exactly when the order came in and who is accountable for your order)?

Delivering a great online experience is often about understanding your customers expectations, then exceeding them and creatively leveraging technology to provide something better than the real-life transaction can offer.

In Internet marketing, it’s not about how cool your site is, it’s about what your site has to offer and if people can find that offer. If you are in a niche services or products industry you must go to where the people are:

Classifieds Listings - Like Craigslist.com, where people are actively searching for a variety of products, services and trades every moment of everyday.

Party Ideas - BestParyEver.com’s business listings directory and premium sponsorship opportunities allow anyone who performs, manages or supports a party to get in front of their audience.

Small Business Networking - Biznik.com is a community for people who are building their own businesses. It’s more about sharing ideas than posting resumes and it’s where the conversations about business and entrepreneurship are taking place.

Music Recommendations - Last.fm is a community to share what you listen to with others. By viewing tastes of people that listen to what we do, we find new music all the time…by browsing randomly through Last.fm profile pages we find even broader music to explore. Advertisers could take note, that if music or related products need to build awareness, here’s your worldwide captive audience.

Being where the action takes place is not new. This principle is not limited to the online space either. Have you ever seen an intersection with four hamburger joints or 3 gas stations? You need to be where people are looking for what you have to offer. The same idea holds true for growth and learning. You can learn on your own, but combining forces with like minded people accelerates that growth.

Environment for Innovation - The Drawbackwards office is now at Gangplank, we are working on collaborative projects and advising others as an anchor tennant at this new Tech Incubator that also serves as the premier Metro Phoenix Co-working campus for web development.

Google Friend Center - Google makes your site into a social network easy

They Don’t Use Social Media in My Industry - They’re using “it”, the question is really about it’s effectiveness and proper deployment.

Never to Early to Talk about SXSW 2009 - You can e-mail housing and they’ll send you a happy reminder when they’re getting ready to set up registration so you can get in on the best price.

Haste Is A Form of Violence - When Speed Increases, What Decreases?

Fail Harder - Video of people making relief impression of Fail Harder out of clear push pins

I’ve Heard of Star Wars Fanatics - but this is nuts…