Comments on: E-commerce – is the next wave about to break?

By: jabez armada

jabez armada — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:30:00 +0000

I've had a similar experience when I bought a pair of small loose diamonds for my handcuffs at Brilliance.com. Their Diamond Search Tool made everything very easy for me and I was able to choose a nice pair from literally hundreds of different diamonds within their inventory, had it shipped to me without any problems. Didn't even have to contact their support line! I doubt that I would have had the same liberty if I'd have gone to a regular jewelry shop in my area. This is one specific instance where online shopping has the upper hand.

By: jabez armada

jabez armada — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 20:30:00 +0000

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fred perry outlet — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:16:00 +0000

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By: ralph lauren polo

ralph lauren polo — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:38:00 +0000

We are headed towards a retail world where there will need to be an obvious justification for a product to be standardised.

By: Jack Kingsley

Jack Kingsley — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:29:00 +0000

I guess everything is becoming about becoming more emotional, more personal with the customer. I personally support this, as I believe in the mantra that "the customer is always king", but this doesn't always work. For example, at Blue Nile I saw someone giving an employee a hard time about a princess cut diamond pendant when they shouldn't have. Too bad I couldn't speak up.

By: Ju Jitsu Sam

Ju Jitsu Sam — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 00:32:48 +0000

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By: Hiren Modi

Hiren Modi — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:26:53 +0000

If our business is seasonable then not we generate more and more revenue but in few month we will achieve our targeted revenue.

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By: Peter Bates

Peter Bates — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:05:32 +0000

Second generation Personalisation and Recommendation Tools must also be part of the next wave. It’s all about making the customer experience relevant to them – particularly when we are in a recession. Very few sites have utilised these tools to the level that Amazon have done. But, the second generation tools are now getting even more sophisticated.

By: Jamie Murray Wells

Jamie Murray Wells — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:31:54 +0000

Thanks Mark, and the best of luck with your new venture.

By: Mark Bowden

Mark Bowden — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:59:22 +0000

Hi Jamie

Great article Jamie, you are doing a fantastic job, and I wish you every success.

I have now backed off the running of my company so you won’t experience the same drop in sales as you will have experienced in the past.

I would love to have had 10% of the funding you have managed to secure, but hey every credit.

Okay the branding I created was built with a £5,000 credit card and did pretty good as you well you know.

Thanks for the inspiration to move me in a different direction I owe it to you.

Regards
Mark

By: Hasan Luongo

Hasan Luongo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:00:10 +0000

i think a discussion of the next wave of e-commerce is incomplete without talking about the role of social. amazon stands firm against in the rise of zappos because it is more social, more reviews deliver more relevant/engaging content that lead to sales.

one the other side you have threadless, offering a highly social and interactive buying experience that no other retailer can match.

additionally add in winelibrary.tv for a diff kind of social, where a daily interactive show and lots of personal brand set the tone for a fun buying experience.

e-commerce is in fact experiencing many new waves, partly due to the massive efforts by small software firms building free or cheap social apps, and smart e-commerce sites that are leveraging these platforms to connect with customers. while web 2.0 has monitization issues and an unhealthy reliance on boring Ads, e-commerce has a lot to gain from web 2.0 and a direct way to turn all that social activity in cash. exciting times indeed.

By: Hasan Luongo

Hasan Luongo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:44:27 +0000

you might want to check out interspire shopping cart, low cost, very flexible platform with full support for digital products.

By: Blawg Review #214 « Charon QC

Blawg Review #214 « Charon QC — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:09:42 +0000

[...] with his blogging and blog reading… I rather liked this wry comment: debunking the notion of “mass personalisation”, which is about as oxymoronic as you can [...]

By: George Bevis

Tue, 26 May 2009 16:55:29 +0000

Mass personalisation has some interesting implications for staffing. Historically, distance retailers shifted high volumes of identical units with cheap (and typically bored) staff providing little value-add to the customer experience. Now, we must either pay more for value-adding staff (I doubt Zappos staff are minimum wage, and there is certainly a lot of effort/spend dedicated to motivating them), or open up our platforms for micro-entrepreneurs (as Etsy does) to achieve the same level of product and service for highly differentiated customers.

The good news is that even 5 minutes per customer of high quality human attention isn’t actually so expensive to deliver (still much cheaper than customer acquisition costs), and may lead to fantastic customer advocacy.

By: Pragmatist

Pragmatist — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:46:06 +0000

I agree that high-touch items are the subject of a lot of focus now, but the idea of “mass personalisation” is an oxymoron. There isn’t and never was a “mass”. It’s just a marketing trick that e-commerce has exposed, and more and more consumers stop falling for each year. Maybe you mean something else by the term?

Not sure we’re seeing a “new wave”. It’s still Web 2.0 which has been all about user empowerment – enabling personalisation through user participation. We’re just seeing that model applied successfully in more and more challenging scenarios, though the ones you mention are yet to scale internationally as far as I can tell.

The semantic web is the next big wave. Let the machines do most of the work.

By: Jamie Murray Wells

Jamie Murray Wells — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:31:18 +0000

@Paul Fisher @Henry Yates – couldn’t agree more. We are headed towards a retail world where there will need to be an obvious justification for a product to be standardised. Those that master the difficult job of mass personalisation of a product also rightly benefit from margin improvements that come hand in hand with the premium customers will bear to ‘make it their own’.

By: Henry Yates

Henry Yates — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:15:10 +0000

Good point Paul – mass personalisation enabled by near zero/very low marginal costs is why I find it an exciting space.

By: Manoj Ranaweera

Manoj Ranaweera — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:09:05 +0000

Whilst we are not an e-commerce provider, edocr.com will evolve to create a meeting place for buyers and suppliers through documents. In this respect, we are interested in discussing with e-commerce solution providers where we provide the hosting and interactivity platform for data sheets, specifications, user manuals, etc (where applicable).

By: Paul Fisher

Paul Fisher — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:46:00 +0000

Nice Post Jamie. I think you’re missing personalisation though. Companies like TailorStore.com and Graze.com are the first step towards a completely new experience in ecommerce differentiation coming from personalisation.

By: Jamie Murray Wells

Jamie Murray Wells — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:05:00 +0000

@William understanding how and when shoppers like to validate each others purchases is crucial in the next stage of empowerment and inclusion of users in the entire e-commerce cycle

By: william

william — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:34:05 +0000

I think that the next phase of e-commerce will be the inclusion and empowerment of users in the entire e-commerce cycle.

I think that the days of large stand alone and niche e-commerce sites are nearing and end.

We are coming to a time where conversations between members and communities will be the trigger for e-commerce activity

By: dan barker

dan barker — Tue, 26 May 2009 12:20:10 +0000

The other factor that joins all the companies you’ve mentioned is ‘fun’. It’s fun to find stuff at ASOS, Zappos, Blue Nile.

‘Fun’ is the exception in online retail to the extent that it’s remarkable.

Blue Nile & Zappos are both great examples of companies using bog-standard e-commerce principles in a really interesting way. Blue Nile with their ‘attribute-based’ search tool. Zappos with their visual ‘explore’ tool.