I’ve been part of the eCommerce space for nine years now and I’ve loved every minute of it, seeing the first online merchants go live, the first price comparison engine launch in the UK (shopgenie -> Kelkoo UK), and research and review sites gaining a foothold.
There has been many challenges from badly designed sites, delivery screw-ups, and security concerns - all still present today but with many more people “getting it”.
The industry itself has continued to grow and expand as more web-savvy customers come along, start spending more, and feel more confident buying all manner of more expensive goods from clothing to cars. In the UK, sales are up 36% on last year and generating over 4 billion pounds per month, with apparel accounting for nearly 15% of that (figures and graph from Forrester Research):
So the question for me is - “what is the ecommerce world going to do over the next few years and how can Webtogs take advantage of it?”. In answer to this, I’ve listed a few trends I’m watching in particular and considering how to relate these to the business:
- Social Bookmarking & Sharing of Products - we’ve seen examples of this at places like Kaboodle where users clip things they’ve seen on the web and then can share those lists and discuss them with others. In theory, we could offer this functionality to people who wanted to produce shareable lists of outdoor adventure gear, although the jury is still out on how many people use this type of feature on a regular basis.
- Virtual Dressing Rooms - which is getting very Boo.com like but also makes sense. Sites like Zafu let you tell it your size and then it shows a 3d model of you and issues personalised recommendations. Could work perhaps for outdoor clothing.
- User Generated Content - There’s lots of research around showing how ecommerce reviews help people make buying decisions that translates into a conversion rate uplift - and this can be standard reviews, product videos (hundreds on youtube), and even q/a sessions. Of course, I have to mention Crowdstorm at this point but also James has mentioned the Reevoo boys too who provide this sort of content.
- Getting the Basics Right - which is probably the most important of them all, from having the ability to contact a physical person in multiple ways (email, skype, phone, live online chat), having a really usable and enjoyable site, and a smooth checkout process.
- Better Delivery Options - whilst not as exciting, have a lot of future innovations coming up which should really make this a better experience. Night time deliveries, ability to pick-up products from multiple drop off points and return them, paying a membership fee each year to get exclusive delivery options, and being able to choose times within 30 minute windows.
These are probably the top five that interest me right now, all of which can be expanded in much more detail than I’ve listed above. One things for sure - finally ecommerce is innovating again and if you don’t move fast - you’ll be left behind!
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5 responses so far ↓
A good post Philip, and I’m very much in agreement. Likewise I have been involved in the e-commerce industry for a long time (around 1999) at which time I joined Littlewoods Shop Direct as part of their 1st e-commerce team, and it certainly provided fanstastic experience and insight as the e-commerce industry developed over the following 6/7 years.
Now providing clients of my user experience agency PRWD with the knowledge and experience gained over this period, I would add a few additional points which we aim to introduce to ensure our clients are innovating in the e-commerce industry:
1) developing transactional sites with persuasion architecture in mind (a good example of this is the new House of Fraser e-commerce site, which I have recently posted a user experience review of(http://www.paulrouke.co.uk/2007/10/08/house-of-fraser-finally-goes-transactional-is-it-a-user-experience-triumph/)
2) tailoring the site content and navigation to appeal to various browsing behaviours ie. hunters, followers, methodical shoppers etc
3) providing intelligent, user friendly and interactive product filtering functionality to allow visitors to browse your shopping range outside of the traditional category/sub-category methods
Finally referring back to your trends, point 4 on getting the basics right, as you say is probably the most important, in particular ensuring that checkout processes have been given significant consideration to best practise methodologies and user testing where possible to ensure abandonment rates are minimised as much as possible.
A great post Philip, and continued success in the development of the Webtogs website..
[...] voice of millions all speaking their view, content being chunked and syndicated in micro elements, ecommerce finally innovating again, and a whole heap more - why fear what is not true… Â Â One day, internet businesses [...]
Thanks Paul - a great article yourself actually on the usability of House of Fraser. With those points in mind, you do indeed need to provide different browsing and exploring options for different people at different times. In our mind, this means having these available so that people can be flexible in how they interact and explore, as we can’t read their minds (not literally!) until they start doing something on the site.
Going outside of the traditional methods of exploring (category nav, attribute filtering, and search), we’ve been playing with a few ideas - but more for phase 2 to be honest.
On getting the basics right - we “hope” we’re on the right track and definitely read everything we could get our hands on. If you fancy doing a usability review on us - we’ll be more than happy
[...] gregoryde wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptSo the question for me is - “what is the ecommerce world going to do over the next few years and how can Webtogs take advantage of it?â€. In answer to this, I’ve listed a few trends I’m watching in particular and considering how to … [...]
Tried house of fraser.
The banner area is nice and clean, and I’m really impressed with the zoom feature. You can even see the stitching on the shirt collars!