Multi-Channel Commerce & Retailing

As social commerce becomes more and more widespread, companies are starting to realise the ‘power of the people’. By this I mean more and more shoppers are speaking to each other about their purchases. What they liked about the product, what they disliked, and how their expectations were different from what they actually received.

Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations (65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities). (Yankelovich)

Buying trends show that if a group of people identify a product as being worth the money, more will follow. This point has been proven with Apple’s offerings in the form of the iPod. Shoppers began buying the iPod a few years ago and it consistently received good feedback. Within months the name ‘iPod’ was elevated to a house hold name. Since then, iPod seems to be the first place people look when they are looking for a new MP3 player…unless they are recommended something better. Enter the power of ratings and reviews.

According to NetExtract (2007); 71% of UK online shoppers seek out ratings and reviews. During a time of social networking (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc) people seem more interested than ever in what other people have to say, and this certainly applies to online shopping.

‘Online social network users were three times more likely to trust their peers' opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions.’ ("Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape," JupiterResearch, March 2007)

So what can ratings and reviews do for an online retailer? By having product ratings, customers can quickly and easily see which products have been considered the best by their peers. The ability to sort search results based on rating is an excellent example of this fact. A customer can search for the product they are looking for, and sort the results to see which were considered “the best” by other shoppers.

While powerful by itself, ratings are not usually enough to sway shoppers to buy. The reason for this is simple, different customers have different preferences. Simply put, it’s a case of ‘What might be great for me might not be what you want.’ This is where reviews come in. A customer can write what they loved about the product, and what they felt could be improved upon. This allows other customers to see why the reviewer rated the product the way they did. In addition to this, many providers of review functionality (such as Bazaarvoice or Reevoo) provide secondary rating dimensions. This allows customers to rate a product on specific attributes. I.e. I would give the product 5/5 for appearance, but only 2/5 for battery life. This, coupled with reviews is a strong argument for a customer as to whether or not they should buy the product – For some customers, battery life is more important than how the product looks.

In my opinion, secondary rating dimensions are massively under used. Some retailers prefer the ‘pros and cons’ approach, where a customer will list out the benefits of and downsides of the product. This, however, is not quantifiable information. The customer has complete free reign over what they choose as a ‘pro’ or a ‘con’, this in itself raises the question, what do you consider to be a ‘pro’ or a ‘con’? Is it something you mildly disliked about the product (but wouldn’t have been enough to stop you from buying it in the first place), or something that would have prompted you to buy something else had you been aware of it.

The use of secondary rating dimensions provides a clear way for customers to rate each attribute of a product. The key point here is that each product will have different attributes. I.e. For battery life, I give this phone 4/5 (useful), but I only give this T-shirt 1/5 (not useful and misleading). This inevitably means additional effort for the business (to identify the attributes) and for the development team (to identify the products to which the attributes will be displayed against).

In short, ratings and reviews provide a strong sway for many online customers, the more reviews the better. However, the key factor for success with ratings and reviews is volume. So this raises the question for businesses; “how can I encourage people to review?” There is no easy answer to this, but if previous trends in social networking/commerce can be trusted; if you make the experience a good one, more and more people will want to try it.

Posted by Jonathan Nobbs at 02:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

It is a very commonly quoted yet never proven belief that men rely on visual input more than women do in how they process the world.  Never having been a woman, I cannot reliably confirm or contest this.  What I do know is that there is way too much data and not enough time to process it.  I recently began using a fantastic tool called Cooliris (http://www.cooliris.com) that helps me expedite the process of processing so if you’re like me (incessant need to know with the attention span of a three year old) then I suggest you try it as well.

Lately, I’ve been shopping for a vintage bicycle from the 70s or 80s as a fixer-upper (not too expensive, but not ghetto) by searching sites like eBay.com, craigslist.org, and the classified section from several cycling-related sites.  By far the best finds come through craigslist.  Craigslist consistently offers the largest selection at the best asking prices.  Of course, they also have the slowest and least functional user interface of all of the sites.  Then comes Cooliris to the rescue!  Cooliris is able to convert any compatible site into a graphical view of thumbnails that can be dragged, scrolled, zoomed, and selected.  It’s like a cross between the screens the police used in the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report and an iPhone.  This type of UI enhancement has been attempted before, e.g. Exit Reality (http://www.exitreality.com), but these attempts were really heavy.  They tried to impose an unusual way to browse that felt clunky.  The UI in Cooliris is not revolutionary.  It’s appeal is the breadth of sites and content that support it and that it is singularly focused on expediting the act of browsing.

So back to my bicycle example.  Let’s say I am shopping for vintage bicycles.  I start on craigslist and do a search on “vintage bicycle” and receive a huge list of poorly written, non-descript words from which I cannot tell anything other than these listings have the words “vintage” and “bicycle” in them.  When I use the Cooliris plug-in I get this:

It’s a visual representation of all of the listings and thumbnails of their pictures.  If it doesn’t have an image, I’m probably not interested anyway.  Of course I can drag it and scroll it:

Let’s say I find a bike I’m interested in, but am not sure I know enough about the model or the restoration process.  I’ll use Cooliris and browse YouTube to find more info:

Again, Cooliris very quickly helps me find relevant content visually and I don’t have to click into each possibility to decide whether the content is germane to me.

Let’s say I’ve found the right bike for sale, found the right knowledge to restore it on YouTube, and now need some examples of what the finished product should look like.  Let’s use Google Images!  Well what I get is ten plus pages of small thumbnails.  If I want more detail, I’ve got to follow the link:

With Cooliris, I get a scrollable view and I can zoom into any image and receive additional detail without leaving the browsing page:

It seems the possibilities are limitless:

1. Browsing for a new outfit for your 20^th high school reunion?
2. Finding images on your hard drive from that family vacation two years ago in Hawaii?
3. Browsing through the candidates running for state senate?

What sites do you use that frustrate you and could be enhanced with a UI like this?  Time is money.  In this case, Cooliris saves me time and speeds up how I spend my money.

 

 

Posted by Lester Lam at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Best Buy recently came out with an augmented reality advert in the Sunday weekly supplement which included a 3-D notebook computer image which if held in front of a webcam would present a  a 3-D image of the Toshiba laptop.

Augmented reality is an interesting concept that can be used to render a richer experience. However, the creativity lies in making this interactive where the consumer is engaged in an online game or for that matter rendering this via a mobile device with product reviews or real-time events in your geo-vicinity. I can see the value if this is made interactive to enhance the digital experience.

Posted by Ashish Jandial at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

With the end of the business quarter people are already looking for trends within the business environment and beginning to make predictions for the year ahead – a brave endeavour by anyone’s standard. Within this melee of one-upmanship it was interesting to find quotes from a quiet harbour of certainty ...

based upon earlier work by Thomas C. Redman “Data Driven: Profiting from your most important business asset”, Harvard Business Press 2008.  http://www.teradata.com/tdmo/v08n04/Viewpoints/EnterpriseView/TenHabits.aspx

In his role as a ‘Data Doc’ he considers the fundamentals which sit behind the latest web technologies and stresses their universal appeal. I will publish this ‘top 10’ and wonder how many entries leave you nodding in agreement, or shaking your head at how your organisation is unable to meet the requirement even though it is an obvious foundation for success.

Top 10 habits of enterprises with the best data quality:

1)      Customer Focus

2)      Process Management

3)      Supplier Management

4)      Measurement

5)      Continuous Improvement

6)      Control

7)      Targets for Improvement

8)      Clear Management Accountability

9)      Managing soft issues

10)   Broad, senior group leadership

Now none of these 10 will appear even the slightest bit contentious. But how would you set about proving them? What measures would you put in place and how would you measure ROI?

Certainly they all seem to come back to a simple maxim, “if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it”. The irony is, getting the right data from the right place at the right time for the right perspective can be as difficult as proving who to attribute this business maxim to. I thought it was Peter Drucker but would also accept:

·         W. Edwards Deming with regard to quality

·         Robert Kaplan, the founder of the BSC

·         Gordon Baskerville's famous forest management dictum

·         George Webster

·         Andy Grove at Intel

·         T. TRAVERS WALTRIP

·         Peter Drucker

·         Sugrue

·         Frederick W. Smith, founder of Federal Express.

 

See how confusing getting the right metrics for a simple piece of data can be? As an aside I would like to list the winner of this attribute contest,….Galileo! It comes from a remark attributed to him, 'Count what is countable, measure what is measurable. What is not measurable, make measurable'."

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=139473

[J Does that make Galileo the first Business Consultant? What would his fees be in 1630s anyway? In any case, the penalty for a producing a result the Customer was not ready to hear was a little more taxing in those days, as I recall on a project deliverable in 1632, “he was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy," forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Ouch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei ]
A little diversion but the point about being careful how and what you measure is a potent one. As Kevin Hillstrom of ‘MineThatData’ suggests when measuring campaign effectiveness, (“Measuring Campaign Results: Short-Term or Long-Term Measurement?”
http://www.allaboutroimag.com/blog/measuring-campaign-results-short-term-long-term-measurement-301267.html )
“..When you step back and measure marketing effectiveness over time instead of at a campaign level, you obtain different results. When you choose to use a different set of metrics, you obtain a different ROI.”
His example was to look at customers panels consisting of people who had not spent in the last 6 months who were either offered (or not) 20% off with $100 spent. At the end of six months trial, the results suggested Customers in the first panel, the one eligible for promotions, spent $50 apiece on average. The second panel, not eligible for any promotions, spent the same amount per customer.
Yet the data seemed to support them when the promotion was first launched. “We plotted demand on a graph and noticed spikes every time we offered a promotion.” So better to stick to the basics, but measure things over time with varied formats to ‘prove’ what you know to be true.

Posted by Billy Byatt at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)