etail strategy beyond the cart
Notwithstanding the gimmicky and highly irritating slide-intro, here’s a video showing off Firefox Ubiquity — an interesting concept which continues to blur the lines between user needs and user actions. These types of services help users share online experiences — and that sort of shared participation is a key to branding today.
Take a look. This is edgy and futuristic, but it’s a great thought-starter: Ubiquity for Firefox on Vimeo
Let’s imagine for a moment that you were a partner (or, rather, a coat-tail rider) for one of the most anticipated product launches of the year. The whole Internet is talking about the product — so much so that online services like Twitter are going into red-alert just to handle the mobs of people talking about the product.
Yes, I’m talking to you, AT&T. For the multitudes of iPhone prospects now visiting your site, they are seeing the following:
I’ve added a red box to show the EXCELLENT placement of the iPhone advertisement. Unfortunately, clicking on this item sends me to the following page:
![After clicking on the iPhone on the home page, this is what you see.](http://etailology.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/att2.png "The \")
(Perhaps they didn’t know the product was launching?)
This wasn’t a case study… I was trying to find out more about the phone! I’m ready to order, pre-order, or simply gawk. I’d have provided my email address. I’d have sent the page to friends. I’ve have blogged about it (in a good way). Even though I can’t buy this product for a month, I could make my purchase decision today, or I could simply become a valuable lead for AT&T to use on July 11th.
Lost financial opportunity for sure, but this also leaves with a decidedly negative impression of AT&T which will become a permanent part of how I view the brand.
Your website is the first place most customers will turn for the latest information and news. Make sure you maintain situational awareness of the role your brand plays in the current web/etail landscape. It means dollars in the door — and a stronger brand.
I’ve often lamented that in while in offline retail environments, you can directly observe user behavior (through retail anthropology techniques a la Paco Underhill’s Envirosell), you couldn’t do the same thing in online stores.
I was then delighted to see Eyetracking technology evolve enough to be used for online retail. And now, the “circle is complete” as Path Intelligence Monitors Foot Traffic in Retail Stores By Pinging People’s Phones.
Creepy? Absolutely. Innovative and useful? No doubt.
While a single shopper’s specific path through a store may be information as trivial as “who is David Thiel’s favorite band” the aggregation of this information through an ambient method like Path Intelligence can lead to all sorts of data driven commerce strategies. This automatic collection of ambient information (vs. the self-promotional blogging/tagging/posting requirements of Web 2.0) is my vote for Web 3.0.
Exciting stuff.
I know, I know. We’re all supposed to use social media, but we don’t know how. Well, here are some places to look for inspiration:
[techtags: social+media, social+media+for+ecommerce, etail, online+marketing+using+social+media, facebook, twitter, del.icio.us, myspace, marketing+on+facebook, marketing+on+twitter]
IA TV: Google Video - The Future of Search?
This VERY interesting video was posted to the IA TV Blog and it shows some truly impactful new features in Google, but I have yet to see these features from Google in the wild. Has anyone else? Check it out: Google Video - The Future of Search?