I’d Rather Vote for President Than Shop for Jeans
I was on a conference call this morning waiting for invitees to join. Someone made a comment, in jest, that perhaps all of the missing attendees were out voting so I had to ask, “Why would anyone go out in the cold (okay, relative cold as it is 55F in southern Cali) and spend their time standing in line for the opportunity to enter a very small booth so they can punch their ballot, and perhaps risk a dangling chad?”
Due to my travel model, I have relied on absentee balloting for decades. But if I were to stop traveling tomorrow, I would still use absentee balloting because it is so convenient!!! I don’t have to wait in line. No weather to brave. I vote at my leisure, in the comfort of my home, on my schedule. I can start voting, take a pause to do some research online, and continue whenever I want. Although absentee ballots are still the minority, during this election, some counties are expecting 40% of voters to be mailing it in.
So when I posed this question on my conference call, a colleague responded: “For the experience.” Why would anyone want this kind of experience? Unnaturally, my brain made the leap to commerce – personally, my preferred method of shopping is online for all the same reasons I like voting via absentee ballot. Although I have been successful at completely avoiding the need to physically interact with a voting facility to exercise my Constitutional right, I haven’t come very close to removing brick and mortar stores from my life. I guess I’m not alone since, according to the latest figures, online retailing is estimated at only 4% of total retail revenue. In some cases, I actually like going to a store (shocking admission from a man who likes to shop) – I suppose it’s the experience. I think I like being able to compare cameras and televisions side by side. I like being able to match a suit with a shirt and a tie. I like going straight to the ice cream freezer and grabbing a pint of Cinnamon Buns ice cream without having to browse the entire store.
So how do we meld the “experience” of physical shopping in a store with the convenience of the online experience? Several retailers have made strides in this already:
* Check out comparison capabilities with deep search and filtering on sites like SonyStyle.com and Nikestore.com. I can start really broad and narrow down my sea of selections with real time updates to the superset by selecting criteria and filtering attributes.
* I love the virtual closets on OSOYOU.com and WetSeal.com (although nothing on Wet Seal’s site fits me anymore). These virtual closets are integrated to social commerce capabilities so I can solicit advice/ suggestions/ ridicule from friends and strangers without dragging them to the mall.
* Got milk? Check out Safeway.com or Peapod.com and try out their logically laid out assortments. Maybe I’m not in the mood for Cinnamon Buns ice cream after all, but I can navigate to the ice cream aisle of the site just like l would if I walked into my local store: walk inside, skip the basket since I’m only buying ONE pint today, go straight to the frozen section, then the ice cream shelves – ahh, now I can browse all of these delectable Ben and Jerry’s pint sized containers. No frills, bells, nor whistles, yet perfect in function.
Of course, the online experience is still far from perfect. Many experiences are still unique to the brick and mortar experience, e.g. trying on jeans to make sure they’re not too tight and not too baggy, interacting with live salespeople for personalized advice on what shoes are best for running.
I also find that the unique experiences I noted above are isolated to specific sites dedicated to one or two categories, that is, I can find virtual closets on some apparel retailer sites and electronics retailers often have good comparison features, but I haven’t found a general merchandise retailer who offers all of these great experiences within one site. I love being able to do one stop shopping inside your store, and I’d really love to experience unique, category specific experiences when I shop your site online!
I don’t really think online shopping will ever completely replace the brick and mortar shopping experience entirely. So I would love to hear from my fellow consumers: how can the experience of online shopping evolve to become as compelling an alternative as absentee balloting?
