While the Web can be a place for sizzle, pizzazz, and trendiness, sometimes the most successful online companies are the ones that just keep plugging along, year after year, marketing what might appear to be unglamorous products.

Such is the story of L.L. Bean, a classic American-brand born and bred in Maine. It sells “outdoor gear for the whole family,” including preppy clothing and well-made camping products that haven’t radically changed in design over the years, and it still does things pretty much the way it used to when Bean, as its fans call it, launched ninety-eight years ago.

Well not quite. In its own way, L.L. Bean has actually kept up with the times, converting a largely phone-oriented mail order operation to the online medium. But what hasn’t changed, and likely never will, is the company’s legendary customer service (including a lifetime product guarantee), for which it recently received a number one rating from Bloomberg Businessweek. That accolade was largely due to Bean’s continuingly evolving Web operation.

According to BusinessWeek, L.L. Bean will reach a milestone this year as its online sales overtakes its traditional catalog orders, long the staple of the company’s $1.5 billion annual business. BusinessWeek says:

L.L. Bean has done more than install such e-tailing basics as designing a Web site that makes placing orders intuitive and package tracking simple. … [L.L. Bean] opened the site to customer ratings and reviews of its wares, even if they’re negative. Today shoppers can chat with call center agents through instant messaging and e-mail. And by next fall the site will add a “click and call” feature that will prompt a help call within two minutes to any online shopper who wants more information.

It is always a challenge for a retailer to sell hundreds of products in different categories via the Web, but L.L. Bean does it well. The company’s website is a model of efficiency. A prominent area atop the home page pitches 150 new products (combating any perceived stodginess that the product line is stagnant). Below are five visual cues to the site’s primary categories: Kayaking & Canoeing, Cycling, Camping & Hiking, Apparel, and Footwear. Clearly, these are designed to appeal to L.L. Bean’s key audience segments, which have been carefully researched and analyzed.

Also on the home page is a block promoting a new line called the L.L. Bean Signature Collection, which leads to a completely separate website. One look at the new site and the customer may think she has entered a universe separate and apart from the traditional Bean. The models are distinctly young and trendy, unlike the average L.L. Bean customer age of 50.

Indeed, the Signature Collection is Bean’s latest attempt to energize itself and appeal to a younger consumer who may already be shopping for preppy classics at J. Crew or a rival retailer – a strategic move designed to seek out a new avenue for growth in challenging times. While it may be somewhat of a risk, the Signature Collection is symbolic of the fact that L.L. Bean is not content to rest on its traditional laurels.

To design the Signature Collection, Bean tapped Alex Carleton, who worked for Polo Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch. But interestingly, Carleton also worked for Bean for a period of time before starting his own Maine-based business, the seafaring hipster-skewing Rogues Gallery, in 2003. Now Carleton has returned to revitalize the Bean line. Carleton says the Signature Collection has “a unique methodology of juxtaposing L.L. Bean's history... with modern design ideas.”

The Signature Collection website has been designed with the same care and attention to customer service as the primary L.L. Bean site. Easy to navigate, each site features such helpful tools as a “Quick View” of each product: A pop-up window provides color and size options, product details, price, photos with zoom capability, and the ability to order the product directly from the window. The shopping cart (or “Bag” as Bean calls it) is a pleasure to use. L.L. Bean’s online fulfillment processing, in terms of communications, speed of delivery, and ease of return, is superb.

L.L. Bean does something else that’s unusual for an American company. It steadfastly resists outsourcing any of its operations overseas, including its call centers. When the company was forced to close a call center in Maine because of declining phone order volume, it offered many of the center employees the opportunity to work from home. That’s because L.L. Bean treats employees like family, offering such benefits as health care and a pension – increasingly rare these days. It also has its customer’s back with its famed L.L. Bean Guarantee, making Bean a trusted brand through the generations and online.