DanceRecords.com was almost exclusively a vinyl shop, but recently added a digital download component to complement the physical product.

DanceRecords.com's Search Interface is not perfect, but their keyword descriptions efficiently get you to the tracks you want to hear.

With less and less vinyl being both produced and purchased by the dance music community, the entire industry has suffered. Many brick and mortar stores simply threw up their hands and called it quits, while others pared down their staffs, and moved into much smaller spaces. DanceRecords.com, already a lean operation, simply chugged along soaking up customers by word-of-mouth, great turnaround times, and the one thing that almost all online stores have neglected: insanely great track descriptions.

One thing is obvious about DanceRecords.com, they love dance music. This admiration displays itself by the way the concern classifies and describes the plethora of music that hits their offices non-stop. Undaunted by having multitudes of genres, and sub-genres and sub-sub-genres, which their competitors have shunned, DanceRecords.com empowers their customers to easily filter through hundreds of selections that bow on a weekly basis.

Interested in Progressive Tribal House? Simply enter those words into the website's search box, and you're given relevant search results that allow you to instantly earmark the tracks that have the most potential to get your head nodding. Once the results are delivered, you can then read the excellent descriptions that not only perfectly describe the essence of the tracks, but when they would be best played during the course of a night.

For instance, I was looking for a high-energy track to drop when I had the crowd rocking, but wanted to take them up a level. Using the above search criteria, I found several selections that had "Banging, Peak-hour, Progressive Tribal house" - Bingo! Instead of having to listen to dozens upon dozens of selections just labeled "House" that you find on many of the leading stores, DanceRecords.com delivered germane results.

This is not something that should be taken lightly. Due to our familiarity with Google and other quality search engines, many buyers may not even notice the quality search results. But try the above search on other dance music online stores, and see what happens. TrackingSpain.com, a site that specializes in the percussive Iberian sound, returned exacty 0 results when entering "Tribal House" in their search box...Zero!

DanceRecords.com got me to the tracks I had the most potential of purchasing, instantly. By taking the time to write elaborate descriptions of each track, DanceRecords.com is essentially creating a target-rich, keyword list for each song in their database. Relevant search results not only saved me an enormous of time, but efficient searching and drop-dead descriptions have another huge benefit, larger orders.

If I have an online buying lifespan of one hour, then DanceRecords.com allows me to listen to many more relevant tracks than their competitors. But more importantly, I'll be listening to tracks that I am more likely to buy. In my case, I found five new tracks to purchase in a third of the time it took me to find the same tracks on the most popular store for dance music.

DanceRecords.com's shopping cart was seamless, intuitive and efficient. After purchasing my five songs, I could immediately download the high-bit-rate MP3s, and burn a CD. If any of the tracks become corrupted, DanceRecords.com allowed me to simply redownload the songs without having to jump through a bunch of hoops to authenticate that I actually purchased the songs.

However, evaluating the entire DanceRecords.com experience revealed some cracks in the seams. Their weekly newsletter is a mess. It's basically just a massive listing of all the new tracks that have been released in the past week. Although, the descriptions are there, trying to read over a hundred entries can make you go blind. To be truly useful, the communication needs to just highlight the "hot picks" of the week and then send you to their site for a complete listing.

Another deficit is their response time for customer service. An email or call can go unanswered for days, and after repeated attempts, our calls were never returned. That said, when we received a vinyl order with a defective record, they did send out a replacement at no charge. The customer service problem appears to due to none of their employees being empowered to solve a customer service issue. Our perception was that the underling had to get some type of approval for solving any type of problem and this significantly inhibits a proper response time.

The takeaway from DanceRecords.com is that you don't need an online store with a bunch of Dancing Hotdogs to succeed. Respecting the users precious time by delivering relevant search results far outweighs a snappy pop-up graphic, or an animated promo. DanceRecords.com has made a seamless transition to the online world, with a rewarding experience. If they can tighten up their customer service, and revamp their weekly newsletter, then they will achieve even greater returns.

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