An electronic catalog system, which may be implemented as a web site or
another type of interactive system, presents context-sensitive account
information to customers during browsing of an electronic catalog of
products. In one embodiment, when a customer accesses a detail page for a
particular product, the detail page is supplemented with information,
such as status information, about a related order placed by the customer.
The related order may be an order for the product represented in the
detail page or may be for a related product. Information about related
orders may additionally or alternatively be added to other types of
pages, such as product category pages and shopping cart pages. In one
embodiment, a customer's related order information is maintained in a
cache during the customer's browsing session, and the cache is updated in
real time to reflect actions performed by the customer.