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Tired and Wired in ECommerce AdWeek Video mobile and social media will be top ecommerce features expert InternetRetailercom

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:05:46 +0000
The two experiences showed me how far some e commerce categories have come and how far others still have to go. When booking the trip I was treated to a variety of services that would help me dodge the many bullets of business travel in surprise fees late arrivals missed connections even cramped seats. The flower purchase conversely left many mysteries unsolved e.g. what the bouquet would actually look like or how long it would last. For many categories e commerce has come a long way since the days when buying something on Amazon.com made you a pioneer. But others still seem to be stuck in . Here s my roundup of which categories offer the latest and greatest features to make shopping fun or at least painless and which ones still feel mired in s features and service. WIRED Footwear They said that people would never buy shoes online but lately e tailers have offered services and features that make it easier to click your way to a purchase than browse the racks at Nordstrom. Timberland and others let you design your own shoe. Zappos has a free return policy and has even been known to recommend a competitor s product. And my favorite innovation comes from Nike a brilliant offline online hybrid that lets geek jocks track distances run calories burned and other measurements online via an embedded communication device in the shoe itself. Fashion Today even the highest end couture is now available to anyone no matter where they live via sites like saks.com and emporioarmani.com. Destinations like Bluefly.com make these items or at least a few of them available at deeply discounted prices. New services like Ideeli have even made discount shopping into a sport with text and e mail alerts as soon as a coveted item goes on sale. Travel It seems like every time the airlines throw a problem at you a Web site pops up to help solve it. Buying the cheapest ticket humanly possible feels easy with discount alerts from all the major travel sites and farecast.com will even tell you whether the fare for your particular route will rise or fall. Seat Guru will help you find the best seat no matter which aircraft or airline. And sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp provide access to hundreds of reviews for any given hotel airline or restaurant. TIRED Flowers This category is plagued by the very problem the wired group has solved. Flower recipients rarely get an arrangement that matches the one displayed on the site there are virtually no personalization options unless you count adding a margin building Vermont Teddy Bear to your flowers personalization and selections feel dated limited and homogenous from site to site. No wonder this category has been suffering from long term decline. Real estate Despite novelty sites like Zillow this category still feels woefully lacking especially surprising given the high level of involvement in this purchase. For Sale By Owner Listings are still listed separately from those controlled by real estate agents. And there is virtually no site that combines everything one needs to make an informed decision listings foreclosures value estimates and neighborhood information. I m sure there are hurdles but this feels like a category where someone can still step in and offer a well differentiated product. Job search Basically sites like Monster CareerBuilder etc. produce too many results and too many irrelevant results. Things are just as bad for recruiters who are bombarded with resumes that have no relevance to the positions advertised. The result is an ocean of candidates submitting an ocean of resumes to people who don t have the bandwidth to assess them. HOW TO GO FROM TIRED TO WIRED So how does one wire up these tired categories The answer lies in those cutting edge e tailers it just takes a little creativity and as always sensitivity to consumer needs. Following are a few suggestions that could help the categories above or similarly tired spaces Address pain points How about digitally aging a bouquet to see what it will look like in a week or even three Or links to vault.com on job search sites to let users find out more about a company warts and all Solve some of the scary mysteries for consumers and they will reward you. Add some sizzle Feature one hour sales on limited stock items to create a sense of urgency even competition. And spice up the merchandise Martha Stewart and Vera Wang make flowers for my Great Aunt. But I know some young women that would appreciate a bouquet by Tom Ford or Muccia Prada. Heavy Web shoppers tend to be younger and hipper so should your product. Introduce personalization Consider giving users the ability to create their own floral arrangement. Or their own house with an automatic e mail that advises when one like it has become available. Personalization has already worked for categories like travel and footwear where the product was traditionally dictated by tastemakers. It s certainly not a stretch to introduce it to the tired categories as well. Get to know the consumer Sites like Netflix have continuous feedback loops that let users rate their choices so suggestions get smarter and smarter. Not perfect by any means but at least helpful. The same technology can be applied to jobs or job candidates flowers or condos. Basic message Give consumers the information they want make the shopping experience as painless as possible and occasionally intrigue and excite your users the same stuff that works in the mall or the car dealership can win people over in the digital realm as well. Mark Cregar is president and principal of Emerging Marketing Consulting. He has held senior marketing posts at Disney Warner Bros. Coca Cola and Nabisco. His views on digital marketing trends can be found at www.emergingmarketing.blogspot.com. Share on LinkedIn Save E mail Print Most Popular RSS Reprints Tired and Wired in E Commerce Oct By Mark Cregar I recently conducted two transactions online booked a trip to Florida and purchased flowers as a gift. The two experiences showed me how far some e commerce categories have come and how far others still have to go. When booking the trip I was treated to a variety of services that would help me dodge the many bullets of business travel in surprise fees late arrivals missed connections even cramped seats. The flower purchase conversely left many mysteries unsolved e.g. what the bouquet would actually look like or how long it would last. For many categories e commerce has come a long way since the days when buying something on Amazon.com made you a pioneer. But others still seem to be stuck in . Here s my roundup of which categories offer the latest and greatest features to make shopping fun or at least painless and which ones still feel mired in s features and service. WIRED Footwear They said that people would never buy shoes online but lately e tailers have offered services and features that make it easier to click your way to a purchase than browse the racks at Nordstrom. Timberland and others let you design your own shoe. Zappos has a free return policy and has even been known to recommend a competitor s product. And my favorite innovation comes from Nike a brilliant offline online hybrid that lets geek jocks track distances run calories burned and other measurements online via an embedded communication device in the shoe itself. Fashion Today even the highest end couture is now available to anyone no matter where they live via sites like saks.com and emporioarmani.com. Destinations like Bluefly.com make these items or at least a few of them available at deeply discounted prices. New services like Ideeli have even made discount shopping into a sport with text and e mail alerts as soon as a coveted item goes on sale. Travel It seems like every time the airlines throw a problem at you a Web site pops up to help solve it. Buying the cheapest ticket humanly possible feels easy with discount alerts from all the major travel sites and farecast.com will even tell you whether the fare for your particular route will rise or fall. Seat Guru will help you find the best seat no matter which aircraft or airline. And sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp provide access to hundreds of reviews for any given hotel airline or restaurant. TIRED Flowers This category is plagued by the very problem the wired group has solved. Flower recipients rarely get an arrangement that matches the one displayed on the site there are virtually no personalization options unless you count adding a margin building Vermont Teddy Bear to your flowers personalization and selections feel dated limited and homogenous from site to site. No wonder this category has been suffering from long term decline. Real estate Despite novelty sites like Zillow this category still feels woefully lacking especially surprising given the high level of involvement in this purchase. For Sale By Owner Listings are still listed separately from those controlled by real estate agents. And there is virtually no site that combines everything one needs to make an informed decision listings foreclosures value estimates and neighborhood information. I m sure there are hurdles but this feels like a category where someone can still step in and offer a well differentiated product. Job search Basically sites like Monster CareerBuilder etc. produce too many results and too many irrelevant results. Things are just as bad for recruiters who are bombarded with resumes that have no relevance to the positions advertised. The result is an ocean of candidates submitting an ocean of resumes to people who don t have the bandwidth to assess them. HOW TO GO FROM TIRED TO WIRED So how does one wire up these tired categories The answer lies in those cutting edge e tailers it just takes a little creativity and as always sensitivity to consumer needs. Following are a few suggestions that could help the categories above or similarly tired spaces Address pain points How about digitally aging a bouquet to see what it will look like in a week or even three Or links to vault.com on job search sites to let users find out more about a company warts and all Solve some of the scary mysteries for consumers and they will reward you. Add some sizzle Feature one hour sales on limited stock items to create a sense of urgency even competition. And spice up the merchandise Martha Stewart and Vera Wang make flowers for my Great Aunt. But I know some young women that would appreciate a bouquet by Tom Ford or Muccia Prada. Heavy Web shoppers tend to be younger and hipper so should your product. Introduce personalization Consider giving users the ability to create their own floral arrangement. Or their own house with an automatic e mail that advises when one like it has become available. Personalization has already worked for categories like travel and footwear where the product was traditionally dictated by tastemakers. It s certainly not a stretch to introduce it to the tired categories as well. Get to know the consumer Sites like Netflix have continuous feedback loops that let users rate their choices so suggestions get smarter and smarter. Not perfect by any means but at least helpful. The same technology can be applied to jobs or job candidates flowers or condos. Basic message Give consumers the information they want make the shopping experience as painless as possible and occasionally intrigue and excite your users the same stuff that works in the mall or the car dealership can win people over in the digital realm as well. Mark Cregar is president and principal of Emerging Marketing Consulting. He has held senior marketing posts at Disney Warner Bros. Coca Cola and Nabisco. His views on digital marketing trends can be found at www.emergingmarketing.blogspot.com. Post a Comment Asterisk is a required field. Author Comment Other Columns Players of Character October Last week was about as bad a week as I can remember at Ground Zero. We lost two employees. 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NEW YORK BOSTON Oct BUSINESS WIRE CMJ Network Inc. CMJ has contracted with Paid Inc. s PAYD PAYD News chart profile more Last Delayed quote data Add to portfolio Analyst Create alert Insider Discuss Financials Sponsored by celebrity services department to invigorate and broaden the scope of its online presence including development of a web community that will among many other elements establish an interactive communication channel with the highly desirable and trend influencing college student market to provide market research data for CMJ s broad client base. Paid will also exclusively manage CMJ s new merchandising line through online channels live events and tours across the USA. CMJ has been a key player in the music industry for over years discovering and supporting new artists from myriad contemporary genres through its online print and live event assets as well as tracking weekly new artist airplay on more than college and non commercial radio stations across North America. CMJ charts run regularly in publications such as Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly identifying the top emerging acts that will develop into the next multi Platinum artists. By building this web community and integrating a broad range of members only online services Paid will provide CMJ a greater range of services to offer its clients including record labels musical artists and their respective constituencies. We ve engaged Paid to develop an interactive community that will expand upon the reach and presence CMJ already has among our college radio stations business clients and fan communities nationwide said Bobby Haber CMJ CEO. Paid will facilitate one to one and one to many dialogues that will enable us to gather additional invaluable insight into the college and emerging music markets. We believe this will translate into new revenue streams for CMJ and Paid as brands and marketers engage us for market research that will enable them to better know their target audience and more accurately focus their marketing efforts to them. Our strategic alliance will enable CMJ to broaden its interaction and dialogue with college students from coast to coast generating critical feedback and market research data signaling future trends and purchasing habits said Keith Garde president of Paid Inc. celebrity services. By reaching out to this broad influential market segment to gather and manage data from them we believe it will give CMJ its clients and Paid s clients a competitive edge. Paid will expand CMJ s online presence by utilizing social media and delivering an ever changing array of applications to this web community enabling innovative content and multiple opportunities for interaction. CMJ Music Marathon Film Festival Paid s first project for CMJ is the launch of its exclusive new merchandising line that will debut at CMJ Music Marathon Film Festival October . Music Marathon is New York s largest and most important music event featuring five days and nights of performances by over emergent acts in venues throughout the city with live music showcases film premieres parties and special events all complemented with more than music media and technology centric panels. Official CMJ merchandise items will be available at shop.cmj.com and at the CMJ merchandise booth at the following New York City locations Booth in the CMJ Exhibition Hall th Floor at NYU s Kimmel Center Washington Square South Tuesday Oct. a.m. p.m. Wednesday Oct. a.m. p.m. Thursday Oct. a.m. p.m. Judson Memorial Church Event Registration Lobby Washington Square South Friday Oct. a.m. p.m. Saturday Oct. a.m. p.m. In the future Paid also will be coordinating VIP fan experience packages for CMJ Marathon as well as for other events nationwide. VIP packages are expected to include unique experiential opportunities such as meet greets with band members photo opps pre concert parties early entry passes autographed or exclusive merchandise and more. About CMJ Network Inc. CMJ Network connects music fans and music industry professionals with the best in new music through interactive media live events and print. CMJ.com offers a digital music discovery service information resources and community to new music fans professionals and artists. CMJ Events produces the legendary CMJ Music Marathon the largest and longest running music event of its kind in addition to live events and tours across the USA. The weekly music business trade magazine CMJ New Music Report is the primary source for exclusive charts of non commercial and college radio airplay and independent and trend forward retail sales. CMJ New Music Monthly the first consumer magazine to include a bound in CD sampler is the leading publication for the emerging music enthusiast. CMJ Access is an integrated marketing agency specializing in providing its clients unparalleled access to the college and young adult demographic and emerging music world. Log on to www.cmj.com for more information about all of CMJ s products and services. About Paid Inc. Paid Inc. operates a diversified set of businesses including its celebrity services and AuctionInc ecommerce technology businesses. Paid Inc. s celebrity services provides celebrities and organizations with official Web sites and fan club services that include e commerce storefronts ticketing and fan experience packages and web site content to attract tens of thousands of visitors daily. Using proprietary patented technology Paid s innovative AuctionInc brand shipping calculation and auction management software and services are utilized to streamline online auctions ecommerce and web site development and hosting. The Company also sponsors autograph signing events and other sports marketing services for sports clientele. The Company s common stock is traded on the OTC Bulletin Board under the symbol PAYD. Forward Looking Statements This Press Release contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section A of the Securities Act of and Section E of the Securities Exchange Act of that are based upon current expectations or beliefs as well as a number of assumptions about future events including matters related to the Company s operations profitability business development efforts and expectations about celebrity programs and fan club activities technologies and services. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in the forward looking statements and the assumptions upon which they are based are reasonable it can give no assurance that such expectations and assumptions will prove to have been correct. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward looking statements as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties. In addition other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially are discussed in the Company s most recent filings including Form QSB with the Securities and Exchange Commission. SOURCE Paid Inc. For Paid Inc. Julie Shepherd of Accentuate PR Juliepaid.com Copyright Business Wire Top stories PM You can buy into this bear market if you know the traps PM Corporate governance takes back seat in bank bailouts PM U.S. stock indexes down for day but up for the week Most Popular READ E MAILED EDITOR S PICK You can buy into this bear market if you know the traps Corporate governance takes back seat in bank bailouts Stocks to look for stability along with data earnings If Warren Buffett is feeling greedy maybe you should be fearful OPEC left to its own devices as hedge funds flee U.S. stock indexes down for day but up for the week Gold drops in biggest weekly loss in two months Dollar edges up vs. most rivals as investors eye volatile markets Copper offers a peek into the world s economic future Yahoo to post results in contentious atmosphere You can buy into this bear market if you know the traps Copper offers a peek into the world s economic future Ten investing rules that will help you weather this stormy market Stocks to look for stability along with data earnings Corporate governance takes back seat in bank bailouts U.S. stock indexes down for day but up for the week Hedge funds assets off billion in quarter on redemptions OPEC left to its own devices as hedge funds flee Mervyn s to liquidate hold going out of business sales If Warren Buffett is feeling greedy maybe you should be fearful You can buy into this bear market if you know the traps Corporate governance takes back seat in bank bailouts U.S. stock indexes down for day but up for the week OPEC left to its own devices as hedge funds flee Yahoo to post results in contentious atmosphere Get the Latest MarketWatch News PARTNER CENTER Site Index Topics Archive Help Feedback Media Archive Premium Products Mobile RSS Podcasts Company Info Advertising Media Kit DJ Client Solutions The Wall Street Journal Digital Network WSJ.com Barron s Online BigCharts Virtual Stock Exchange All Things Digital MarketWatch Community RealEstateJournal.com Financial News Online WSJ.com Small Business Copyright MarketWatch Inc. 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IR Newslink Free Worldwide Contacts Newest Opportunities Buyer s Guide Media Kits Reprints E Prints Buy Sell Internet Businesses Find Web Wholesalers Web Design Top Guide Web Design Guide EC Technology Guide IRCE CD ROM Web Design CD ROM Order Reprints E Prints Buyer s Guide Wednesday October Video mobile and social media will be top e commerce features expert says Online video mobile and social media technologies will have a profound impact on the online customer experience in the years ahead said David Hogue director of information design at Fluid a web design and usability technology and services vendor. Each of the three technologies will uniquely affect how Internet users shop e commerce sites he told more than attendees yesterday at the Web Experience Forum held in Boston by Gomez Inc. and sponsored in part by Internet Retailer . Video is the next JPG there will be seamless integration Hogue said referring to the standard image file format that can be easily embedded on any web page. Today you go to a site and a video player loads and ultimately things begin to stream. Tomorrow we ll see seamless integration of video within designs enhancing the customer experience. We re already seeing it on sites like MartinAndOsa.com where products appear on models who walk on and off the screen as you filter products you wish to view. Mobile commerce technologies will become a greater part of the customer experience as they continue to develop and as consumers and retailers learn the best ways to put m commerce to work Hogue said. In stores consumers can use mobile technology to cross the boundaries between the physical and online worlds he explained. As people walk by your store you can transfer coupons to their devices. Shoppers can access deeper product information while in stores like a video of a fellow customer wearing a jacket in the mountains. And consumers can shop by price while in one store to see what prices are at other stores. And burgeoning social media will help the online shopping experience mirror its bricks and mortar counterparts Hogue said. Social tools like co browsing at NetShops.com are sprouting. You can invite friends to shop with you he said. And consumers have begun building affinity groups such as ones centered around brands on Facebook. They are evangelists with credibility and authenticity. By using video mobile social and other technologies Internet retailers can further enhance the ways customers shop their sites. How these technologies will mature though remains to be seen. The future is hard to predict Hogue concluded but we know we can craft better web experiences. Back. Copyright This content is the property of Vertical Web Media. 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