Retailers go interactive and social with the latest Web 2.0 technologies
By Bill Siwicki
Online retailing has always faced a significant conundrum: It can’t recreate the shopping experience of being in a real store. Seeking to overcome that hurdle, sporting gear and accessories retailer JanSport deployed in April the Fluid Social application from vendor Fluid Inc. that takes advantage of the popularity of Facebook to enable friends to exchange ideas as they shop online.
Once consumers have downloaded the JanSport application to their Facebook pages and registered, they can chat with each other while on JanSport product pages. Or, by clicking on a My Friends Like link they can see JanSport products their friends have posted on Facebook.
This new feature enables JanSport to tie that interaction more closely with the online shopping experience, says Courtney Blacker, director of brand marketing. “This social application allows us to have a one-to-one conversation with consumers which will build the brand as that emotional connection grows and spurs long-term sales growth and loyalty,” Blacker says.
Social and interactive
The JanSport application is an example of the next generation of Web 2.0. That term describes ways in which using the Internet has evolved beyond just clicking from one static page to another to a more interactive and dynamic experience.
Using Ajax to pop up more product detail and customer reviews was typical of the early days of Web 2.0. But today Web 2.0 technologies are becoming more sophisticated. Retailers already are deploying features that let a web site more closely approximate the way a human salesperson would help a consumer select a product, and that, like the JanSport example, enable consumers to shop together online.
On the way are even more innovative technologies that will move online retailing still further away from static product presentations.
Shortcovers, the e-books division of Indigo Books & Music Inc., is an example of an online merchant making product presentation more dynamic by letting consumers quickly change the content of its home page to suit their tastes.
The home page displays several titles the retailer is currently featuring. But above those thumbnail images are tabs that let the site visitor see what was featured yesterday, last week and last month. Only the images and related text change—the page itself does not refresh.
Similarly, a consumer can choose to view the most popular titles, those with the best ratings or new additions. And they can choose to see books, chapters, articles, short stories and other types of content. Whatever they choose, that section of the page changes to display that content, without the home page itself refreshing.
“The more page refreshes a user has to go through, the higher probability you lose that customer. It’s purely about delivering a great experience that drives conversion,” says Michael Serbinis, executive vice president and chief information officer at Indigo Books & Music and head of Shortcovers, which boasts 10,000 registered users in more than 160 countries since its February launch. “If you can do that with fewer clicks and fewer screen refreshes, all the better.”
Shortcovers’ I.T. team built the functionality using Ajax for page display and web services to funnel the appropriate information from its databases to the pages. The cost was no different than that for creating a set-up where shoppers would have to click from page to page every time they wanted a different view, Serbinis says.
It’s too early to draw conclusions on how the Web 2.0 technology is faring, but he says so far the conversion rate is “reasonable for just being out of the gate.”
Browsing together
Novica, a partner of National Geographic that sells works of art from artists around the world, also is just out of the gate with its Web 2.0 technology, co-browsing. It had been using the technology previously for customer service, and it says customers approved. Last month it opened up the technology to all registered customers to use among themselves.
From a prompt directly below a registered shopper’s name on the upper left of the home page, the technology launches a system through vendor Sesh Inc.’s site that frames the retailer’s site, allowing a shopper to invite another registered Novica shopper to discuss products in a chat box, write notes on top of any section of a web page, and use pen tools to draw on the site. Co-browsing functionality also enables shoppers to navigate the site together, each taking turns guiding one another to different pages.
Novica decided to go beyond customer service and create a social shopping environment for customers to interact on their own to build on its Novica Friends community, where, à la Facebook, registered users can become followers of any of the artists from around the world with products on Novica.com.
Sesh plans an enhancement that it will offer to e-retailers like Novica. The vendor is working on a method to draw social network users to retailers using its system by creating a Facebook application that Facebook users would download to their accounts.
The application will enable a user to invite a Facebook friend to a “sesh.” If the friend accepts, the application will take both users out of Facebook.com to the retailer’s home page for co-browsing. Further, the company foresees tying this functionality to retailers’ social network display advertising.
Using the Internet has always been an individual experience, but shopping is so often a social experience, such as going to the mall with friends, says Jarrod Rogers, Sesh CEO.
Recent research has shown consumers now spend more time on social networks than they do on personal e-mail sites. Sesh wants to take advantage of increased social networking to facilitate social shopping experiences online.
“Technology that can marry socializing, display advertising and shopping can bridge the gap between social networks and generating revenue, for retailers and social networks,” Rogers says.
Interactive sites
While retailers like Novica are using Web 2.0 technology to make the shopping experience between a shopper and her friends more interactive, others are focusing technology efforts on making the experience between a shopper and an e-commerce site more interactive.
D-Link Systems, a manufacturer that operates a site that promotes its products then points shoppers to the e-commerce sites of retail partners, has used the services of rich media and Web 2.0 technology vendor Easy2 Technologies Inc. to create its Network Configurator. It decided to go with the highly interactive approach because, it says, figuring out the kind of computer network one needs and the products required to build that network can be a daunting task.
When a shopper clicks on the Network Configurator, launched in April, a video begins. In it, a friendly woman welcomes the shopper, presents some basic information about building a network, then begins walking him through the first question on the road to a shopping list. Behind the woman are animations that complement her descriptions.
The shopper clicks on the appropriate answer, displayed next to the video screen, then clicks Next. On the following page, the woman describes the next phase of the network-building process and asks another question. And so it goes for a few more pages until a shopper is presented with a list of products that meet his particular needs. On the shopping list page, a shopper can interact even more with the site by clicking on the selected products to view animations, videos, galleries of pictures, 360-degree views and more.
In a Flash
D-Link shot the videos of the woman against a green screen. Easy2 Technologies created the animation and edited it into the videos. It then used Flash technology to create Flash Video files that begin playing seamlessly when only 10% of a file has been downloaded.
For the shopping list page, the system lets D-Link list products in various ways; for instance, by price, by promotion, by retail partner. D-Link routinely sends an updated spreadsheet with product information and promotional rules to Easy2. These are incorporated into the application, hosted by Easy2, which only taps D-Link’s servers for product availability and current price.
D-Link won’t disclose what it pays for the application, which required some customization of Easy2’s existing system. Easy2 says customization can run around $50,000 and monthly fees for its technology and services range anywhere from $500 to $5,000, depending on the volume of traffic and products.
The Network Configurator will be worth the investment because consumers now expect a web site to provide more than just product information and prices, says Daniel Kelley, senior director of marketing.
“The more in-depth education and knowledge you can display about a product, the better the chance you will have over a competitor to make that sale,” Kelley says. “That’s why we deployed rich, in-depth, highly interactive content.”
New tools
Vendors have more Web 2.0 e-commerce innovations in the works.
Fry Inc., for example, is developing a system that will let a shopper on an e-commerce site chat with friends from a range of social networks without leaving the e-commerce site. It will be something like how CNN and Facebook cooperated on Inauguration Day, enabling Facebook friends to exchange comments as they watched the CNN feed of the event. In this case, consumers also will be able to go their separate ways in an online store, as they may in a bricks-and-mortar store, and meet up on any page whenever they want to discuss a product.
LTU Technologies Inc. has just begun marketing a multimedia visual search and browsing technology that enables retailers to more distinctly classify and correlate products by color and visual style and shoppers to search for and browse products in a different fashion.
The technology of the vendor, which is working on a customized proof of concept with eBay, extracts all the colors in a product image and classifies each product with highly specific color boxes displayed on each product page. It also analyzes and matches the shape of products, particularly useful in apparel, the company says.
So, when a shopper selects a color box on a product page, the system presents a search results-like page that displays all products that contain the same color. Shoppers can do the same with visual style. So, for instance, if a shopper is looking at a colorful blouse, she can click in the color box display on the color she likes best in the blouse and the system presents a results page of brooches, earrings and scarves with the same color.
“The technology helps a retailer because, for example, the retailer may offer clothes from a great many different collections, all of which classify colors and styles in different ways. Our system can look at everything and pull matching colors and shapes from any collection. It’s automatic, does not require human interaction, it unifies everything,” says Alexandre Winter, LTU Technologies CEO and co-founder. “And it helps customers find things on a retail web site in an efficient way. It not only refines search but expands it to browsing.”
Interactive video
FlipSeek has begun offering retailers a technology that embeds hyperlinks in online videos in a way that the links follow the product throughout the video. Clicking on the link takes the viewer to a retailer’s product page displaying the item.
Online video today can provide information, but doesn’t directly lead to sales, says Adam Marino, founder and president of FlipSeek.
“We can monetize video where the video itself is not only providing information and helping with branding and increasing length of stay on sites, but also working to sell products,” Marino says. “Because when someone sees something in a video they are interested in buying, they can click on the product at any point during the video and are taken to the product page or shopping cart and can buy then and there.”
That’s a long way from viewing a static image on a retailer’s web page, and an example of how far Web 2.0 has come in changing the online shopping experience.
bill@verticalwebmedia.com
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