Archive for the ‘social shopping’ Category

Social shopping, follow the buzz

October 1, 2009

User recommendations and crowd buzz are redefining the way some online shoppers behave…

Examples like Crowdstorm are a new way for consumers to find what to buy based on the buzz around products. Users recommend products, and the crowd defines the best products by recommending what they know and like. Popular products go to the top of the list, weak products disappear. It works rather like the popular news website Digg.

What is buzz? Well for social shopping sites it is measured by the amount of activity surrounding a product: how many times a product has been viewed, how many bloggers have written about it, and how many users have commented about it.

Friends can be added which helps build the crowd effect, and these friends can be people they already know or those they’ve met on the site and whose product recommendations they trust.

Expect in the future; users posting their own product images and videos, and top-rated members being invited to beta-test new products from big brands.

UK-based Crowdstorm was founded by Phil Wilkinson, who also set up online price comparison sites ShopGenie and Kelkoo, and aims to be one of the internet’s best sources of impartial product information.

Another social shopping network to have launched recently – but in the US – is ThisNext. Featuring slick design and sending visitors down one of three paths: Discover, Recommend and Shopcast. The discover section lets users browse products recommended by others. Clicking on a item allows them to add it to their wishlist, recommend it, or find out where to buy the product. Users can recommend products by creating themed lists (from ‘Japanese Snacks’ to ‘Things I Cannot Do Without’), or simply by clicking on an easy to install ‘Add to ThisNext’ browser button.

Appealing to the blogging crowd, ThisNext’s standout feature is shopcasting: bloggers can create small banners for their website. These so-called shopcast badges either display their own recommendations or those of the ThisNext community, broadcasting the products they love or must have.

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Monetising social networks – easy to say, harder to do

April 11, 2008

A new warning just out – social networks may not drive online sales! You don’t say….

I was asked to talk about this area of online strategy at an LBS event a few weeks ago – the theme – monetizing social networks. There is a lot of interest in this right now and for good reason, we all want to make sure we are investing in stuff that will drive sales. This particular session was interesting, there were many bright individuals in the room and together we were able to highlight a few cool emerging businesses but we weren’t weighed down with examples of big brands leveraging social networks to drive online sales.

Now I see that Forrester are offering up a note of caution, claiming social networks have been considered more effective for brand-building and less proven for driving revenue or sales conversion. They say that retailers therfore need to continue investments in proven techniques like e-mail marketing and free shipping promotions to drive sales.

Well yes that’s a safe conclusion to draw because it’s a classic case of “get the basics right before adding the frills”. But it’s a big generalisation and we should all be working on improving the basics everyday anyway – I think it’s still important for anyone who owns online strategy for a retail brand to be thinking about how their customers might benefit from well thought through innovations and in some cases that will draw on social networks or on offering interaction that fits the customers mission.

This story summarising recent research with retailers in the US about their plans for online spend in 2008 suggests most aren’t thinking any further than placing ads on social network sites. I do hope some of the bright sparks in retail are thinking abit more ambitiously than this…please say yes.

BTW – i almost forgot to mention the headline news of this research from Forrester and Shop.org – Retail online sales (US) are set to grow again to $204 billion in 2008 from $174.5 billion last year. This despite the recession! All I can say is some brands are going to have to work harder to maintain growth and that means challenging the assumptions and thinking futher ahead – online strategy designed to deliver something of value to your customers and within a multi-channel retail strategy.

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Everywhere and nowhere baby, social networking for retailers

March 21, 2008

Online Retailers today are trying to figure out how to play in the Web 2.0 world – and the latest wave is Social Networking for Retailers. I don’t know what Jeff Beck was on when he wrote the lyrics for Hi Ho Silver Lining, but he created a big hit with these lyrics:

You’re everywhere and nowhere baby, thats where you’re at. Going down a bumpy hillside, in your hippy hat…and away you go now baby, I see your sun is shining. But I won’t make a fuss, though its obvious.

 

For me this surreally sums up the approach of some current online strategies – one of the fave raves right now is monetising social networks – I was invited to discuss this very thing just last week at LBS Technology Summit - Monetising Social Networks. And this week it also cropped up in The Economist.

At LBS I was on a panel with Alex Kwiatkowski of Datamonitor, Alix Taffle of Gumtree/eBay and Indira Thambia ex Argos for an interesting discussion about what is and isn’t happening with retailers to monetise social networks. A number of interesting examples and ideas were kicked around but there just wasn’t a feeling that any of the big boys is making it a major priority right now or that we’ve seen the next big thing yet. For most retailers it’s still an experiment, and today I heard about this (good hype value) initiative just announced by Sears and Facebook – Sears is kicking off a new prom-dress campaign that lets shoppers share their selections with friends on Facebook. The other interesting initiatives are coming from niche or specialist online players – I like this one for shoe lovers.

I’ll be keeping my eye on how this all unfolds, but I’m sure we won’t be calling it social networking for retailers in 3 years, and it certainly won’t be a business model as such – just another element in the proposition or experience for those that get it right – shall we call it Social Shopping?

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