Smart marketers have always known that the customer is king, but a look at what�s on the drawing board and entering the marketplace at technology developers suggests online retailers will soon have even more new ways to give shoppers royal treatment.
The theme of shopper empowerment characterizes much of what�s currently on the minds and in the labs of developers and the online marketers they target. Providers are reworking technology initially deployed in other sectors or available only to site operators on the backend and rolling it out directly to the consumer web interface. They�re figuring out new ways to segment online content according to consumers� preferences and deliver it in richer formats. It�s all geared toward an improved shopping experience�and improved sales.
In a scan of new online merchandising and marketing technology developments both within the company and across the marketplace, �It comes back to the convergence of the channels and efforts to make it easier for consumers,� says Kim Weller, principal consultant, user experience, at technology consulting firm Molecular Inc. �Some of the tools that typically have been reserved for staff, such as the ability to find products across different stores, are being made available to consumers.�
Molecular already has helped Talbots Inc. roll out such capacity to its online customers. Style Search, a feature implemented on Talbots.com last year, which lets online shoppers locate an item of apparel in a Talbots store and reserve it online for a store visit, is based on inventory data previously available only to store associates at the POS terminal.
Even that capability, which only a short time ago was on the cutting edge of technology implementations, may soon be trumped, says Don Cosseboom, director of research and development at Molecular. He sees a day in the not-distant future when the web interface will put at online shoppers� fingertips the ability to determine where in the store an item is located. That could allow online consumers to establish not only whether an item is in their local store but where it�s actually located within the store, before they leave home to pick it up.
Cosseboom explains how such an application might work. �Most big box bookstores, for example, have consistent layouts, according to which version of the store the company is running in any location. So if a shopper is looking for the French Laundry cookbook, the system would know that in this bookstore, the cookbook section is located in this area,� he says. If that location capacity exists within a store�s back-end system, it can be put out on the web interface, he adds.
Weller says this type of web-to-store application could find use in home improvement stores, mega bookstores, consumer electronics stores, or any large store where shoppers must spend time searching the aisles to find what they are looking for. It empowers consumers to get to the products they want more easily by cutting through the double barriers of understanding whether a product is in the store and understanding where in the store the product is shelved, Cosseboom says, adding that he would not be surprised if this type of application rolled out in retail within a year.
Price comparison�by phone
Molecular also foresees a growing number of new shopping applications for web-enabled wireless technology: for instance, applications that would allow a shopper to compare via wireless device prices on the same product at local consumer electronics stores without actually having to go to or phone the store.
Already, says Weller, Amazon�s Japan operation has gone a step beyond this concept with an application that allows customers to use camera phones to take a picture of a book�s bar code, submit it wirelessly to Amazon, and receive a text message on Amazon�s price on the book in return. In the U.S., software developer ScanBuy has launched a retail application, ScanZoom, designed for incorporation into camera phones, that allows consumers with an equipped phone to point it at a barcode and immediately access existing content related to that bar code.
�It�s something camera phones and bar codes were never intended to be used for, but they are tying these different technologies together,� Weller says. In addition to a convergence of channels, new shopping applications such as these preview a future in which technologies themselves converge. �Examples like this rely on the phone�s wireless network to connect to the Internet. In the future, your cell phone will probably use a wi-fi network as a way to connect. So the whole idea of wireless being carrier-level versus Internet will be even fuzzier than it is today,� says Cosseboom.
Fuzzy search
�Fuzzy� is a good thing at Transparensee Systems Inc., developer of product search technology. That might seem contradictory for search. But Bruce Colwin, vice president of business development, believes search could be a better experience for consumers�and capture more online conversions at merchants�if it were less sharp and a little more fuzzy.
Transparensee has developed technology it says is a next-generation, more user-friendly product search that is an alternative to guided navigation. The technology is applicable to search in any industry sector where the range of attributes attached to a product is so broad and complex that an exact match against all specified preferences is unlikely, according to Colwin.
�Two of the biggest problems in e-commerce search, as seen by the user, are that your search produces no results, in which case you have to keep changing your preferences until you find something, or you broaden your search so much that you get too many results back, with little relevance. These are the problems we�re addressing,� Colwin says.
The so-called �fuzzy� search technology delivers results that not only represent the precise value the searcher has asked for, but also whatever represents the values immediately below or above the searched-for value. On a real estate site search, for example, for a house with a specific number of rooms, square feet, construction type, and multiple other attributes, a precise match might yield no results because no house matches all of what was searched for. That leaves the searcher guessing which values he must change to produce a match. Tranparensee�s tool finds results close to what the searcher has asked for, in addition to any precise matches. The technology makes adjustments concurrently across multiple data fields to deliver results that though technically �fuzzy,� are meaningful to the search.
Colwin says an implementation has been developed as proof of concept for a retailer currently using conventional guided navigation, and it�s also being tested internally by a second retailer. The product has been deployed in the non-retail sector for more than a year. The company sees potential application of the product for any online seller of products associated with multiple specs and data fields, such as consumer electronics.
The e-email alternative
Overstuffed e-mail in-boxes have some marketers looking for additional means of customer communication beyond e-mail, and RSS has received attention as one alternative. Consumers subscribe to the content they wish to receive via RSS, in much the same way they register for e-mail, but though RSS skirts the e-mail channel, the technology poses a limitation for brand marketers: it delivers information in text instead of the richer communication possible directly on a site and through some e-mail.
Direct Message Lab has developed technology that targets that problem with a separate channel, outside of e-mail, that can deliver subscribed content directly to consumers� desktops in a media-rich format. While RSS is an option on the platform, it�s just one component. �If I were Mattel, and I wanted to deliver information on new things that were happening with Barbie, delivering it through RSS is delivering a headline and a description. It doesn�t convey the brand in the way you want to,� say Steven Plous, CEO.
By contrast, the company�s Brand Channel can deliver rich content, with a branded look based on the brand�s preferences, directly to subscribed users through the window it opens on the subscriber�s desktop screen. The service has two parts: on the front end, an application that sits on the user�s desktop, which periodically reaches out to Direct Message Lab servers for requested content; and on the back end, a web-based administrative console that the brand marketer uses to create and deploy content requested by the user.
Plous says the channel is spam-proof. �The application goes only to Direct Message Lab servers and looks for messages appropriate to the user. So the only messages that can be delivered through the Brand Channel application are messages from our domain,� he says. The hosted service can deliver complex applications including e-commerce in the delivered message.
Three customers, including an online retailer, went live with a beta version of the Brand Channel in January. Plous views the Brand Channel as an application that, at least initially, marketers will use to target their best customers, who can be encouraged to register with incentives such as getting the first look at new merchandise. It�s those fans of the brand who are most likely to engage with the channel, he adds.
�Our goal is to improve purchases in the top 10% to 20% of your customers,� he says. �If we can do that, then we�ve done something spectacular.� Once a base for the channel has been established among those top customers, the channel has further use as a customer acquisition tool, he adds.
Evolution of e-catalogs
Enriching subscribed content is one way online marketers are seeking to keep an increasingly sophisticated online consumer engaged. One execution of that theme is an evolution of e-catalogs that puts the image-enhancing, information-grabbing and shopping cart functionality accessible on the rest of the web site right into the middle of the catalog page. Scene7 Inc. recently rolled out that new functionality, in development over the past year, at a number of e-retailers. It�s also scheduled to go live shortly at Amazon.com Inc. The tool, called Shop by Collection, is geared toward online merchants looking to move beyond an e-catalog to functionality more integrated into the web experience. �People launch e-catalogs because they love the lifestyle imagery. The challenge is that it�s a separate fork on your web site. It�s not really integrated into the web shopping experience,� says CEO Doug Mack.
Current e-catalog technology most often requires the shopper interested in several products in a lifestyle photo of a room setting, for example, to switch around among multiple product pages to find detail and shopping links for all the products. Shop by Collection incorporates what Mack describes as �next-generation user interfaces� around core dynamic imaging technology that will allow merchants to load all content related to all the products in the room setting into a template so as to provide a single-screen merchandising experience.
�So if I am looking at some lifestyle imagery and I hover over an item on the page, there�s a data feed that will then show the product in silhouette, with all product information such as price and dimensions,� he says. Shoppers who want to drill down for greater visual detail can from that page also implement zoom, color switching, and other imaging functionality for individual items in the lifestyle photo. From that page, shoppers can also drop the items in the photo into a cart.
�The idea is to move the web away from being a point, click and wait for a new page medium,� adds Mack.
Whether finding it online more easily with improved search, finding it more easily in a brick and mortar store with information gleaned online, or more easily plucking a single item from a room setting, getting to the desired product faster is a key driver in new and upcoming generations of online retail technology. Though the technology may be new, however, it replicates online an axiom already known by any store retailer that stacks the best deals at the end of an aisle and every cataloger that positions its most striking new merchandise at the front of the book: Shortening the distance between the customer and the right product is one of the best ways to shorten the distance to a sale.
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