Multi-Channel Commerce & Retailing

Why do people shop online? Because it is easier to compare prices online (and so find a good bargain), search for information, convenient and quicker. That’s why search engine and comparators are so popular. Considering that - it is always with surprise that I notice how little e-tailers are investing in search technologies. Try to search for a blue shirt size 15 on a website and it is a safe bet to say that most results won’t meet your expectations. Most e-tailers will blame their search engine for this but it is likely that they do not even have people looking after their search engine on a daily basis. That’s a shame as search is probably the most used feature on a website therefore a good search engine is a quick way to stand out from the crowd! How? The first thing to do is obviously to get the basics right in indexing your attributes and make sure they are normalised, the second thing will be to start playing with the relevancy algorithm and look after your search reports (I won’t detail that here) and the third one will be to innovate. How? Visual search!

 

Continue reading "E-commerce: is that time to invest in visual search?" »

Posted by Guillaume Vingtier at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Imagine a world where more than a third of the visitors of a store would start their shopping and fill their trolley and then, all of a sudden, leave the store with all these baskets lying on the floor. It looks more like science-fiction that anything else, but unfortunately for online retailers this is still the daily routine: according to a recent report from Jupiter Research only 64% of shopping carts filled on a site will result in a purchase!

Continue reading "One page check-out and perpetual shopping cart: an opportunity not to be missed!" »

Posted by Guillaume Vingtier at 08:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Virtual worlds, like Second Life, have carved a niche in the hobbyist world. In these worlds participants earn “Linden Dollars” by creating and selling clothes, furniture, cars, land, etc. to each other. All of this is very nice for those who share this hobby, but of little use to the rest of the world. However, there are some features of that world that make it interesting to those of us who specialize in more traditional eCommerce models. First, there is a floating, but fairly stable exchange rate between the Linden Dollar and the US Dollar. Second, there is no restriction on what type of commerce takes place in the virtual world. You could, for instance, sell music downloads there, collect money for the transaction in Linden dollars and exchange them for US Dollars. The question that arises is why would someone sell in that world when the tradition eCommerce sites already do a good job of selling many products. Several reasons come to mind. First: Browsing. Traditional eCommerce is essentially like going to the hardware store. You sign in, search for an item, pay for it and leave. In the brick and mortar world, you can do that too, or you can “hang out” in a store to see what’s new. Many stores like American Eagle and Target are laid out and merchandised to appeal to this type of shopping. (Their sales numbers speak for the appeal of this strategy.) Second: Not all products are easy to sell in a traditional eCommerce site. Furniture, clothing and office furnishings sell better when the user can “experience” the products, not just look at a picture of them. Perhaps the ability to configure a room, an office, or a mannequin in a 3D world would be superior because it allows a customer to “walk around” the choices and modify them until they get it right. Third: Youngsters. The rising generation of shoppers is not like us. They are a wired group who prefer texting to talking on the phone, and playing Internet video games against their friends to having them over to the house. Will 3D Commerce have more appeal to them than the current user experience once they become young adults?

Posted by Stephen Alan Potts at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Increasingly, companies that have a B2B business model are realizing that their current websites are not designed to provide a rich, interactive and user friendly shopping experience.

Continue reading "Are B2B websites facing an identity crisis?" »

Posted by Ashish Jandial at 09:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Ecommerce implementations programs are complex and challenging. Not all retailers have the internal capabilities or scale to execute on them successfully. Interestingly, a leading research analyst confronted me with the question - "So what are the challenges that we need to be aware of before embarking on ecommerce implementation programs?"

Continue reading "Ecommerce Implementation Pitfalls" »

Posted by Ashish Jandial at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)