The Fish Farm links to the best new posts and articles, related to commerce, that Salmon have found on the internet in the past month. This is February 2011′s fresh catch.

Exciting Commerce : Bonobos, Birchbox & Others: Who Has The Stuff To Become The Next Zappos? [Jochen Krisch]
Originally posted in German by Jochen Krisch, and adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo, we are told that US investors are seeing the next Zappos as something more like a Bonobos, Birchbox, ModCloth or Shoedazzle. Krisch explains that these ventures have business models which employ unique and difficult to copy components.

Hitwise Blog :  Which retailers are leveraging the marketing power of Facebook? [Robin Goad]
Hitwise UK’s Research Director Robin Goad analyses which merchants are making the most of Facebook’s enormous marketing potential, highlighting 10 brands doing better than most.

Practical Ecommerce : JC Penney Incurs Google SEO Action : How to Protect Your Own Company [Jill Kocher]
How far should a company trust an SEO agency to act on its behalf?  Recent stories of Google blacklisting of JC Penney and Overstock.com might make retailer’s take stock of their SEO outsourcing arrangements.

Locayta Blog : eBay launches augmented reality fashion app [André Brown]
Augmented reality technology is finally being embraced by the retail community. Whilst many merchants are still investigating its potential, Ebay is forging ahead with a fashion app that mimics (replaces? lol) a traditional offline shopping habit  i.e. trying something on, with a virtual try-before-you-buy feature for sunglasses shoppers. Nice.

Econsultancy.com : Six reasons why your brand should hop on the api bandwagon [JD Lasica]
In this JD Lasica explains how APIs can take a brand into promising new directions by harnessing the power of a community.

ReadWriteWeb : Amazon Prime includes streaming video service [Audrey Watters]
Audrey Watters examines the new benefits of Amazon’s premium service, Amazon Prime, which has been expanded beyond its initial focus of cheaper and expedited shipping.

ReadWriteWeb : Eye Tracking & User Testing Made Easy with YouEyetracking [Audrey Watters]
Audrey Watters looks at user testing and in particular ‘eye-tracking’ which ordinarily is an expensive undertaking. However startup YouEye may offer a way to simplify that process – both in terms of cost, testers and technology.

Logic + Emotion : Social Search Will Force Your Business To Recalibrate [David Armano]
As a result of Google’s latest foray into indexing social network content in its search results [Quora, Flickr and Twitter content for example], David Armano highlights how businesses might want to evolve to stand a chance of being found in the future.

Media Futurist Data is the new oil [Gerd Leonhard]
Having had the privilege of seeing Gerd Leonhard present ‘Data is the new Oil‘ at eConsultancy’s Future of Digital marketing, I was delighted to see an online version where Gerd explains the concept during a discussion on media innovations for AME Info [Dubai].

Web Strategist : Beyond social: disruptive technologies to watch [Jeremiah Owyang /Charlene Li]
Altimeter’s Charlene Li presents her viewpoints on disruptive technologies to watch –and those to ignore.  Charlene used ‘Zipcast’ a no-download video+slides technology that allows anyone to give a ‘keynote’ speech to an online audience in real time. Nice.

FutureNow / Grokdotcom : Testing: where to begin [Natalie Hart]
Natalie Hart highlights how testing can yield a great amount of insight & revenue.  But where do you start?

In No Particular Order : Growing pains etailing in the noughtweens [Ian Jindal]
Ian Jindal reflects on a trend seen in the etail sector to move to a more pan-channel, commercial set of demands from ecommerce professionals.

Wired : HTML5 will be done in 2014: What Comes Next? [Scott Gilbertson]
Scott Gilbertson says the web doesn’t move at the pace of standards bodies, but at the pace of web browsers and innovative developers. So now that the web’s governing body have announced that HTML5 will be complete by 2014, what come next?

Retail Week News : Games new strategy aims to triple digital revenue by 2013 [Nicola Harrison, Requires Retail Week Registration]
Nicola Harrison highlights how Game aims to triple its digital revenues as part of a three-year strategy to evolve into a fully multichannel business.

Guardian Newspaper : Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble? [Dominic Rushe]
Loss-making Twitter has been valued at $10bn. Facebook is said to be worth more than Ford. Now, for some investors, the alarm bells are starting to ring. Dominic Rushe investigates.

Six Revisions : Anatomy of an Effective Product Page Design [Kean Richmond]
Kean Richmond outlines that to overcome the inability to touch or try a product, pureplays have to be better than brick-and-mortar equivalents. He outlines how providing as much information , being price competitive, and providing a flawless user experience is essential.

Social Media Today :  Why Facebook Could Dominate the Next Generation of Ecommerce [Matt Ambrose]
Matt Ambrose says that day by day, Facebook’s tentacles continue to spread and pull in more of the web into its domain. We’ve already seen the announcem,ent of Facebook Deals, but what is the wider impact on the world of ecommerce. He says competitors need to be afraid. Very afraid.  Are you?

Did we miss anything important?  Please let us know.

And today, 6 short years since the YouTube domain was first registered, the daughter of video – online video – is simply blossoming.  Some would even say exploding. So I propose that today, video saves the eCommerce stars, giving leading and innovative merchants a renewed basis for differentiation and online growth.

Why?

To set the scene, first and foremost, lets look at some generic online video statistics:

1. YouTube counted more than 112m unique viewers in the U.S. alone in Jan 2011, and served up nearly 8.5bn streams (Nielsen).
2. The total U.S. internet audience engaged in nearly 4.9 billion viewing sessions during the course of the January 2011. (Comscore)
3. 171 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in January for an average of 14.5 hours per viewer (Comscore)
4. 83.5 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in January 2011, with the average duration of the average online content video being 5.0 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes (Comscore)
5. Home and work online video usage rose 45% in January 2011 as compared to January 2010 (Nielsen).
6. The number of unique viewers increased by slightly more than 3% (Nielsen).
7. In January 2011 Google Sites (stats driven predominantly by YouTube.com) , ranked as the top US online video content property (144.1 million unique viewers), VEVO was no. 2 (51.0 million), Yahoo! Sites no. 3 (48.7 million) and Viacom Digital no. 4 (48.1 million viewers) (Comscore)
8. In January 2011, the average time spent per viewer was 283 minutes – 4.7 hours (Comscore)
   • However the average Netflix viewer spends far more time engaging – 11 hours and eight minutes (Nielsen)
   • Hulu’s viewers spent on average five hours and 35 minutes viewing video (Nielsen)

(Hat tip to Patricio Robles for publishing some of these stats here)

As Patricio outlines, point 6 is massively important.  It means that rising online video viewing is happening on the back of greater consumption, by broadly the same audience.

And lets not ignore some anecdotal evidence which also suggests its an exciting time for online video – lovefilm just got gobbled up by Amazon after all.

So what do these statistics imply for merchants?

Well certainly online video is a huge business, spawning new industries (streaming, video on demand, P2P, vodcasting) and is cutting across other types of media consumption (like TV). But what is also becoming clearer, is that professionally developed online videos are already far ‘stickier’ than many perceive. And with viewers able to engage in online video properly (in many more places, on many more devices) a pretty seismic shift is occurring in the way merchants can merchandise and communicate with their customers.

Why merchants must adopt online video.

1. Video is a rich absorbing way to help build up a brand’s ‘backstory’ and can be used to build up brand equity
2. Video can help ‘engage’ customers more deeply – brands can develop ‘how to’ guides, provide advice and tips, and develop video galleries with ‘ask & answer’ style formats
3. Merchants can leverage increasing thirst for online video, and increase page views on key pages with promotional or relevant video placement
4. Merchants can leverage and increase time spent on key category or product pages (as a result of video placement) and seek to up-sell or cross-sell and display (in situ) clear ‘call to action’  overlays in online video (e.g. promoting 10% off if ordered today)
5. Merchants can provide deeper / richer merchandising capabilities on product pages, potentially leading to better conversion.  For example videos can display 360° views of a product, assembly instructions, customer service videos, or even customer or celebrity endorsements.
6. Merchants can look to re-purpose or re-use online video assets across other channels  (e.g. Blogs, affiliate websites, email [remember html5's role here] or even within interactive newsletters)
7. Merchants can tie QR codes (offline) with online video (e.g. catalogue -> web, instore -> smart phone).

Hogwash? The results are already becoming clearer for merchants who are early adoptors of online video. For merchants who have begun to explore the use of video to develop deeper, more compelling user experiences (particularly for Gen-Y [18 to 34 year olds]) they have found online video helps them reach their revenue growth aspirations.  This is already being echoed in research:

1. According to Comscore, brands using online video have seen lifts of anywhere from 20%-40% in terms of incremental buying.

Online video Innovation – A quick merchant showcase [click on any image to enlarge]

M&S

Marks & Spencer have an advanced M&S TV section on their website, with enough gravitas behind it to merit a key placement on their eCommerce website homepage navigation (see circled in yellow below)

The TV Channel is powered by Adjust Your Set, a full service video production agency with its own ‘video commerce’ ­platform.  M&S’s TV Channel page has a gallery style, with all the ‘Channels’ displayed in a familiar way.

However, when you pick a channel, the eCommerce potential of M&S TV becomes much clearer. As a video is played, the right hand side reveals thumbnails for each respective garment during video playback.  The correct colour of each garment is displayed, as is the price. And I noticed that if the product is out of stock it displays it as such at this stage (albeit not all the time). Customers can click the product thumbnail to reach the full product detail page, containing more detailed information such as delivery & returns info or detailed product reviews.

I think the potential of M&S TV is best exemplified on their Wine Channel.  Clearly M&S is in the business of selling bottles of wine – but their wine channel explores areas of wine that customers will be interested in; namely wine of the week, wine making, top tips, wedding wines etc.  This demonstrates the value-add and wow! factor, that video can bring to customers.

Moreover M&S constantly promote a show reel of the most popular videos, displaying both runtime and more details on rollover (Chianti video rollover highlighted below)

And M&S’s use of video does not end there though. On the product details page, videos are once again used to support product copy.  Notably the same videos are used in store (evidence of multi channel marketing in operation).

Amazon.com

As always Amazon are a pioneer in the video space.  They have been placing videos on product information pages for some time as characterised on their Kindle page.

But their use of video is being driven into other areas, and they have chosen to embellish their (already ludicrously rich) product information pages with user generated video content.  Participation levels I would suggest are quite low, but what better way to foster impartial advice?  Hopefully Amazon customers won’t be seeing this image too often.

I remember both Lush and Comet asking for similar user reviews in the past, with mixed success.  It will be interesting to monitor how user generated video content grows with smart phone growth. I’d also expect to see video reviews surfaced across multiple channels (e.g. Amazon could leverage videos across its mobile channel or its iPad interface as well as in its price comparison App’s in due course. No doubt 4G services will play a big part in the adoption of video across mobile properties.

Kiddicare

UK based Kiddicare (now owned by Morrisons) have really been pioneers in the use of video on their eCommerce site.  They have over 2,335 videos (at the time of writing) on their Kiddicare.com Television channel, and also large video representation on YouTube, their affiliate sites and various sites they syndicate to.  They partner with Liveclicker.

The Television Channel promotes a number of different genres of video, tips & advice, reviews, accessories, buggywalks, product features, help, and promotional.  What I really like is the categorisation too.  Customers who are interested in a particular brand can easily navigate to the appropriate video, equally a customer who may not know what type of booster seat is needed for 4-11 year olds can easily find what they need.

To facilitate sales, embedded within each video featuring a product is a clickable thumbnail, which links out directly to the eCommerce website and the respective product details page.

Casting further afield, and pulling people into Kiddicare.com, Kiddicare’s Youtube Channel has 750 subscribers (796 Friends) and a total of 11,980,349 total upload views to date.

(Disclaimer, Kiddicare are a  Salmon client, and our work with them is viewable here)

ASOS

ASOS also promote videos on their site, these include ‘latest’, ‘Celebrity’, ‘Cover Shoots’, ‘Designer Interviews’, ‘Fashion Week’, ‘Music’ and ‘Events’.

Interestingly though they are already re-using video in one particular iteration of their digital magazine.

Their product detail pages also include video, which displays professionally shot catwalk style videos but also (nicely) highlights the background music you were listening to; which adds to the experience and depth of the ‘ASOS lifestyle’ customer experience, in my opinion.

Net-a-Porter

Just this month, Net-a-Porter also launched their own TV station. Visitors are able to shop, browse and comment on four channels: ‘Runway‘, ‘Who’s Who‘, ‘Trends 101‘ and ‘Flashbacks‘.  Net-a-Porter are using the Brightcove video platform.

In the interests of multi channel, Net-a-Porter have taken the time to ensure their TV station can be viewed online, on mobile devices and on the iPad. Notably, however, the company is already making strides with regards to Interactive TV, and will launch in the US on Google TV-enabled devices. It’s already available to view on the internet

Alison Loehnis, Net-a-Porter’s VP of Sales and Marketing, said after its launch, “We have taken our original concept of a shop-able magazine one step further with the addition of shop-able TV.”

On Net-a-Porter.com, video is used in a different way to M&S, video content ‘connecting’ to products in the eCommerce catalogue via a link like, “Shop the Current Collection” or “Shop the Claudia Schiffer look”.

This approach ‘groups’ products on related landing pages as opposed to driving customers to a single product details page.

As video commerce matures, analytics will show which approach (driving customers to a landing page or a single product detail page) converts highest.  Net-a-Porter’s current approach brilliantly irons out ‘back’ button issues (i.e. when a customer is clicking in and out of pages based on video or thumbnail content) which doesn’t transition well on other sites.

Interestingly, however, on Net-a-Porter.com online video is also used on product detail pages, although in this merchants instance the customer currently doesn’t benefit from an embedded player to pause, rewind etc.

Knicker Picker

Although it has been around for some time, Knicker Picker is an eCommerce site that has had online video as part of its merchandising strategy for some time. I show it simply for one reason: the company has really tried hard to use video to heavily contextualise their product; showing customers what the items are like on ordinary people, outside of a fashion catwalk.  I think it’s an interesting case study even today, as it illustrates the flexibility that video provides in terms of developing a brand story.

Video platforms – what’s needed?

There are many video platforms available, each with their own twist and particular orientation. For some of the companies in this space, their origins lie in video production and so there remains a skew towards this aspect of their businesses. However for many other vendors, the emphasis is on technology, streaming, eCommerce, social media and simply using online video to sell. For merchants choosing an online video platform, getting the correct balance between the technology platform and production quality can be hard, and requires serious investment across potentially multiple suppliers and in-house operations. And production and technology platform aside, merchants also need to think hard about how best to integrate into already sophisticated eCommerce customer journey’s.

Video production aside, here’s a quick checklist of what merchants should be looking for from their online video platform.

1. Flexibility of branded & unbranded embeddable player
2. Built-in accessibility
3. Ability to integrate (potentially in real time) video content with eCommerce product catalogue databases and flexibility to link to either a singular product thumbnail and a single product detail page, or to a relevant and broader landing page)
4. Clickable and customisable video overlays, again harnessing integration with eCommerce catalogue content – price, description, ratings & reviews, stock availability, call to action and importantly a ‘buy now’ procedure
5. A full suite of social media and sharing options
6. Automated video publishing – uploading, encoding
7. Video SEO
8. Video serving optimisation via CDNs (Content Delivery Networks)
9. Video Analytics, including A/B testing, dashboards, reports
10. Video content management and production workflow
11. Video distribution, syndication, synchronisation
12. Livestreaming capability (e.g. for customer service video chat)
13. Options for advertising and monetization
14. Support for HD and HTML5
15. Video migration tools (you might change your mind – don’t get tied in)

Which video platforms are attracting merchants?

Each merchant has different needs and aspires to different goals with their use of online video. Here is a short list of companies that merchants should look at in more detail in my opinion.  I am sure I have missed some off this list (but this reflects how fast-moving and dynamic the online video space currently is);

Adjust Your Set
Brightcove
Buto
Buystream
Flixmedia
LiveClicker
Overlay.tv
Qoof
Scene7
Treepodia
ViCommerce
VideoClix.tv

What’s the future for online video?

Clearly online video is moving very quickly and adoption rates are surging, reflecting customer thirst.

One of the key future issues is likely to be better distribution and delivery of video content to mobile devices.  But additionally, how online video connects with and integrates with Interactive TV is an area worth monitoring.

Whilst user generated video is being throttled by a lack of desire by customers to either ‘live stream’ or be be the ‘star of the show’, this mentality is slowly changing – so support for uploading and livestreaming seems to be increasingly important.

And as online video matures still further, there is no doubt that it will be worth observing trends toward HD and potentially 3D formats too.

Finally what is absolutely clear, for merchants at least, is that standalone online video will fall away as fully integrated video commerce solutions prevail.

Suggested further reading: Comscore : The State of Online Video

Trying to keep my head above the January deluge of posts on eCommerce trends for 2011, I thought it might be interesting to look back on previous years’ forecasts.

I found a post from eCommerce Times (published in 2002) called “Five E-Commerce Trends” and have been reflecting on the issues from a 2011 perspective.

1.    Multi Channel retailing arrives

Nine years on, has Multi Channel retailing actually arrived? While it is certainly true that most retailers do now have multi(ple) channels, they are still on a journey towards offering a truly joined-up Multi Channel experience. With the ongoing proliferation of channels and technologies, retailers are having to work very hard to figure out what is right for their customers and how to prioritise the huge number of possible initiatives. One of the key challenges in 2011 is cross-channel optimisation, both at the customer facing end of things and within back office systems and processes. Legacy product, stock and warehouse systems, designed to meet the needs of ‘old-style’ retail and manual processes that cut across traditional department boundaries, are a huge inhibitor to cross-channel success.

2.    More satisfied customers

Hmm, an interesting one. It’s probably worth putting this one into the context of the time the article was written. In 2002, eCommerce was still recovering from the shake-out of companies that followed the ending of the dot com bubble and there were some high profile customer satisfaction disasters. The 2002 article refers to research showing that ‘eCommerce companies made consumers happier than offline retailers’. Interestingly, in 2010, internet pure plays again outperformed Multi Channel retailers in customer satisfaction (Christmas 2010 Online Retail Customer Satisfaction Index).

While still a key issue for all retailers, customer satisfaction is not normally headline grabbing compared to technology-related topics that typically feature in trend lists. Part of the challenge for retailers is that customer satisfaction is ‘only as good as your last order’ and it’s always relative.  The impact of their customers’ ‘hyper-connectivity’ is a key challenge in 2011. Customers now expect much more than they did in 2002 and can share poor experiences quickly and easily with large numbers of people.

3.    Consumers do their own thing

While there certainly are many sophisticated tools on the market to track and analyse online customer behaviour, it is still difficult for retailers to grapple with the vast quantity of data and translate it into meaningful insight. They are struggling with both the volume of data available and the challenges of making sense of data across channels. With the speed of technology innovation, it’s hard to predict precisely how customers are going to use each new device and how and when retailers should develop new services and offerings.

Personalisation has been talked about for a long while but still very few retailers execute successfully on this.  The holy grail of a ‘single view of the customer’ is a long way off for most Multi Channel retailers.  With the arrival of social commerce, consumers are revealing (consciously and sub-consciously) a lot more about their likes and dislikes, so this should enable retailers to make their offers more relevant. However, as humans we will always do our own thing – thank goodness !

4.    Death of the mid-size e-tailer

Well, since 2002, we’ve certainly seen large e-tailers like Amazon, eBay and Play massively grow and develop their operations. As well as organic growth, they have developed their offerings in ways no one of could have predicted – via massive range expansion, as well as business model and product innovation (e.g. Kindle and eBay’s own brand fashion).

But there’s also been significant consolidation among online only operations, notably Amazon’s recent acquisition of LoveFilm. With the availability of open source and software as a service platforms, it is still possible for small-scale businesses to operate successfully in niche areas. However, for medium sized retailers, the middle ground is a dangerous place to be; lacking the scale of the large players to compete effectively, but with a higher cost base and less differentiated offering than the smaller (more agile) niche businesses. We’ve certainly seem some of the mid-sized Multi Channel retailers struggle and go under in recent years – e.g. Woolworths, Zavvi – and there will be further challenges ahead I believe.  To be able to survive beyond 2011, it seems you need either massive scale or a distinctly niche offering.

The internet start-ups that have made it big since 2002 (Facebook, Netflix, Zappos and Nakedwines for example) have tended not to be traditional e-tailers (now there’s a phrase I never thought I’d use!) but have created brand new business models around social commerce, streaming media or a service culture.

5.    More profits

This was very much an issue in the post dot com bubble days and remains an issue for companies like Twitter and Facebook, where investment to achieve operational scale still runs ahead of profits.  However, for Multi Channel retailers it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separately measure profits from online sales.  With the eCommerce market still growing, channel usage and technology still evolving rapidly, online success needs to be considered across a range of key performance indicators, including the contribution made to the overall business.  With the growth of cross channel transactions (e.g. Reserve and Collect) this should become easier to monitor and report.  However, in the current economic climate, strategic investments with long payback periods will be difficult for mid-sized retailers to justify.

Conclusion

So, what does this all mean for merchants today?  Three thoughts stand out from my brief journey back to the future.  Firstly, while the detail may have changed the topics are still relevant nine years later.

Secondly, so many elements of 2011 eCommerce that seem important today just weren’t on the radar in 2002.

And thirdly, a question: what will happen in the next 9 years that doesn’t feature on any of the 2011 trend lists?

I was lucky to squeeze in a full day at Retail Bulletin’s Multi Channel Summit 2011 on Wednesday.  In this post I thought I’d document a few take-away’s from the key presentations, and additionally high-spot a few quotes from the various speakers and panels .  All in all it was a good day, and I recommend you add it to your calendar for 2012.  Enjoy the notes.

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Session: A Profitable Future Strategy in a Multi Channel World. Speaker: Simon Russell, Head of Multi Channel, John Lewis (JL)

To begin here are a few quotes from Simon’s presentation:

“Multi Channel does not mean online”
“What is key, is a seamless experience across the very many channels”
“Customer shopping habits are dramatically changing”
“How quickly can you change your business – to be able to sweat the asset – when the foundation is there to do so?”

Simon also highlighted the three typical categories of customers;

1. Acquired
2. Retained*
3. Reactivated

*Simon said notably that Retained customers spend “by far the most” with JL.

I also liked his graphic about the life-cycle of Multi Channel, this is my sketch of it.  This graph is an adaption of the Kübler-Ross model.  Where are you on the graph?

Delving deeper, Simon highlighted three key ‘tensions’ in evolving to a Multi Channel operational model and culture;

1. Internal competition
2. Channel profitability
3. Systems alignment

In terms of culture I was fascinated to hear that JL will introduce WIFI into their stores “and not shy away” from their price promise of being ‘never knowingly undersold’.   This is a very brave and bold stance given consumers hyper-connectivity to competitor pricing via smart phones. However, get it right, and JL will clearly engender a great deal of trust with shoppers by taking this approach imo.

Profiling JL’s inroads into systems alignment, Simon mentioned JL’s 130% yoy growth for their ‘Click and Collect‘ service – additionally naming it as JL’s fastest growing Multi Channel fulfilment method.

My ultimate takeaway was that JL are getting Multi Channel right.  We all know that anyway. Furthermore it’s so refreshing to see a Head of Multi Channel talk so little about technology.  That might seem strange coming from a CMO at a global SI but its been obvious to us at Salmon for some time that ‘cultural’ and ‘people’ based issues are far more complex than ‘technology’ when it comes to leading, steering and delivering any programme of change, particularly a transition to Multi Channel Commerce.

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Session: Driving wallet share and conversion through a consistent customer experience across every channel. Speaker: Jonathan Wall, Group eCommerce Director, Shop Direct Group (SDG)

Jonathan began by providing a brief review of SDG and their 8 marketing channels [catalogues, web, tablet, phone, mobile/sms, social, email, paid search].  What was fascinating was the revenue split by channel;

1. Phone – 30%
2. eCommerce – 67%
3. mCommerce – 3% (based on 5% visitor sessions)

Jonathan highlighted that according to Forrester 13% of clothing sales in UK will be bought via mobile – increasing to up to 15% in 2015.  So you can see a great shift already taking place for his customers, no doubt replicated elsewhere (n.b. lets remember Simon Russell’s earlier quote - “Customer shopping habits are dramatically changing”).

Jonathan also mentioned Facebook deals, and Facebook check-in’s being ‘sponsored’ in the future.  I could not agree more.  Its exciting, scary, fun and fast moving all in one.  I can easily imagine checking in at ‘Westfield’, ‘Oxford Street’ or ‘London South Bank’ and receiving vouchers, recommendations and deals for fashion brands, restaurants and museums. Taking it further into the Semantic web, a restaurant could offer discounts based on known table availability in real time etc. Awesome.

I found it very interesting that at SDG, mobile commerce AOV’s are 2% higher than traditional eCommerce! (although that is NOT the same in mobile Apps.)

Looking at near futures, Jonathan presented his belief that ‘images’ and not just QR codes have a big future in Multi Channel commerce, highlighting Google’s lead in this space. He described mobile if-you-like ‘connecting’ the Multi Channel experience. He also championed Amazon Windowshop as a great customer experience on tablets and slates which I share.

As an aside, it was interesting to hear from a predominantly ‘online’ retailer on his particular perspectives on Multi Channel. Understandably, in the absence of a high street presence, the emphasis was very much on mobile, but I imagine that pop-up stores, tablets and the complete integration of call centre operations are very high on the agenda at SDG (or is already an area where they have unique expertise).  It would be interesting to hear more about that. I’d also like to see SDG perhaps present on digital catalogues and their integration into the marketing-mix in the future. I am sure they are a critical component of their overall Multi Channel strategy.

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Session: Improving Customer insight and loyalty through a single customer view of the Multi Channel shopper. Speaker: Derek Ecclestone, Research Director, eDigital Research

Being a marketer I lean in favour of market research – and I do like the concept of ‘listening’ and turning ‘data’ into actionable ‘insight’; and then listening and learning again. Derek’s presentation provided a decent insight into the state of the nation – with the audience contributing their own contribution via WIFI voting handhelds.

71% of the conference audience (n.b. this will skew results, but still) said that their business was NOT fully capitalising on the mobile commerce opportunity.

Derek went on to say that, “Multi Channel integration was an EXPECTATION rather than a DELIGHT factor”, a scary thought for merchants just embarking on their Multi Channel journey.  This belief, combined with the fact that ‘Out of Stock’ remains the Achilles heel of reserve and collect models, illustrates just how critical systems alignment (right back into the supply chain) is vital for developing an excellent customer experience.  According to Derek, “2/5ths of all failed reserve and collect and home delivery transactions will see the shopper purchase from a competitor.” (Stats from Nov 2010 eDigital research study)

Derek offered up his simple way to measure lost sales:

% of potential Customers who fail to to buy due to integration issues
X
% who were lost to competition
X
Average shopping basket
= Cost of Integration fails / per month

On a positive note Derek says, “Obtaining Customer feedback is cheaper than ever” and that measuring, listening to, and responding to “continuous months of performance KPIs is key.” It was certainly food for thought.

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Session: Delivering a seamless reserve and collect service that delights your customers across any channel. Speaker: Chris Corbin, Head of Multi Channel, Halfords Group

(Disclaimer- Halfords are a Salmon customer, and we delivered the projects that Chris presented about)

“Stores and Service are at the heart of Halfords’ Multi Channel strategy”
“Online sales account for around 10% of total sales”

Chris started his presentation by highlighting Halfords, its trading model and what has worked in terms of Multi Channel.  This included these four areas;

1. Reserve & Collect advertising
2. Delivering a good site experience
3. Gaining in-store commitment
4. Meeting customer expectation

Chris went on to say that “cross functional commitment” is key to success.

I could go on more – as Chris’ presentation was excellent (one of the best on the day imho) but regular readers will have seen we’ve written lots about Halfords on this blog already.  For more info on the projects Chris discussed, simply follow these links:

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Other highlights

Mobile
One of the highlights for me were the various discussions on mobile, that filtered in throughout the day.  In the panel session entitled “Integrating Mobile into your Multi Channel Strategy” a few interesting perspectives were aired.  Mobile commerce still polarises people (and therefore organisations) and the apps vs. optimised mobile commerce website debate simmered gently.

Because each merchant has a different target audience with different affiliations to smart phones, its easy to see why this polarisation occurs. But four key retailing themes emerged, that transcend a debate about apps or optimised sites or iphone and android. Demographics aside, the context of mobile in retail involves these topics and I hope they weren’t lost on delegates.  They were;

1. Loyalty
2. Location
3. Personalisation
4. Localisation

Whilst Fergus Boyd (Acting Head of eBusiness, Virgin Atlantic Airways) said that it was his belief, “an app maintenance bubble is arriving” (a great point in my opinion) he also went on to discuss the true merits of mobile which was refreshing.

Culture
Simon Forster, Director of Debenhams.com came out with a beauty : “Multi Channel is an ‘AND’ culture.  Not an ‘OR’ culture.”

Priorities
IMRG say the top four priorities for 2011 in retail are;

1. Having an effective Multi Channel offering
2. Innovation
3. International
4. mCommerce

Legal
A discussion on “Cookies, Customers, Consent“ was very interesting.  The presentation by Mike Butler (Partner and Head of Commercial Law, Squire Sanders Hammonds) centred on the “Data Directive” [Directive 95/46/EC] and the e-Privacy Directive [Directive 2009/136/EC] which are as ‘grey’ as legal matters can possibly be it would seem!  The take home was that ‘Cookies’ sit at the centre of the debate with regard to privacy; and that the debate centres on ‘harvested’ vs. ‘collected’ data ['harvested' being unknown by the customer, 'collected' being known by the customer].  Bluring the regulation further is the issue of ‘static’ and ‘dynamic’ IP Addresses.  At the moment a static IP address are deemed ‘personal info’ in the UK.

Whilst it is blurred regulation wise, any complex eCommerce implementation comes into sharp collision with regulation, so it can’t be ignored.  Here’s two instances that will stop you thinking ‘what’s the fuss?’

1. Internationalisation – clearly brings with it different regulation per geographies. France and Germany for instance (and increasingly Holland) have strict privacy regulations compared with the US and UK.
2. Personalisation (incl. behavioural targeting) –  clearly brings to bear key issues such as ‘transparency’ and in particular ‘transparency’ vs. ‘consent’.

Interestingly as the US is coming more inline with the UK with regards privacy (Yes, you read that right) , the legal side of Multi Channel eCommerce remains as fast moving as ever. Watch this space……

Social Media
I have to say I was disappointed with the social media content at the conference.  Being told social allows a merchant “to have 1-to-1 conversations with customers”, felt like I’d been thrown back 4 years and unfortunately it tethered the debate at a level that was perhaps too high level from the outset.

However, Fergus Boyd (Acting Head of eBusiness, Virgin Atlantic Airways) at least offered more detail, highlighting Virgin’s strategy around the 3 S’s – Selling, Socialising and Servicing.  I also felt that Kiddicare‘s Simon Harrow (disclaimer:  Kiddicare are another Salmon customer) did more than most to explain how social media actually lowers costs (hooray – its not just about selling) in areas like customer support.  For the record, Kiddicare has created customer self service areas and FAQs together with a searchable database of support and service issues, directly integrating their forays into social right into their overall eCommerce strategy.

Perhaps more interestingly, Simon also suggested delegates should take a look at charities and their social media exploits, because they typically have a culture built around ‘helping’ and that they now benefit from a self fulfilling prophecy around the culture of ‘service’.

Whilst the debate about social media was generally high level, areas like SEO benefits were also mentioned, as were the usual suspects in terms of ‘Who is getting it right‘ – take a bow once more ASOS [Community site], M&S [facebook], TopShop [facebook]and Next [facebook].  Also huge credit to Charles Tyrwhitt, whose directors we were told, actively engage in social media circles and fold consumer feedback as far into the brand as is possible – product design. For the record other brands mentioned positively were BestBuy, Eurostar, SouthWest Airlines and JetBlue.

Other

“uCommerce” was mentioned. I’m not sure what it means but I’d hazard a guess at ‘ubiquity’, ‘uniqueness’, ‘universality’ or maybe even ‘unison’.  All the words seem applicable!

————————————–

I think that is as much as I can document.  As always the networking was very useful too.

Did you attend the conference and did I miss something big?  I’d love to hear from you.

Here’s a Salmon front-end authored post, that aims to highlight 10 important front-end considerations that should be made when developing mobile eCommerce solutions.

1. Make a beeline for the streamlined – With unpredictable 3G connectivity and download speed, it’s important that pages use as little bandwidth as possible to ensure the customer is not waiting ages for a page to load. The ways this can be achieved are:

• Use CSS3 properties instead of images - where possible use CSS3 properties instead of images, to reduce the number of images that need to be downloaded. We did this with the buttons on Halfords’ mobile optimised site. If the browser doesn’t support border-radius it gracefully degrades to square corners.
• Use image sprites – Use image sprites to reduce the number of HTTP requests.  Reducing the number of HTTP requests can make a web page load much faster, and we all know that when it comes to enterprise eCommerce online revenue – every millisecond counts. Further to this, WDL [Web Design Ledger] has a useful how-to Sprite guide)
• Optimize your images - Use 8-bit PNGs over GIFs to reduce the file size.
• Avoid inline JavaScript and CSS – Developers should avoid inline JavaScript and CSS as much as possible, as this increases the size of the HTML file, and thus could prevent it from being cached by the browser. Instead, keep your JavaScript and CSS in an external file.

2. Do not rely on JavaScript – Not all mobile devices (currently) support JavaScript, so allow users to navigate your mobile site without it, and only use it to enhance the user experience. On Halfords’ mobile optimised site (more about the launch of this solution can be found here), our main use of JavaScript was for showing and hiding the product description and customer reviews on the Product Details pages – so as to reduce the amount of scrolling required to get to the bottom of the page.

3. Keep it semantic – If your HTML is structured semantically, any users of older devices with little, if any CSS support, will still be able to use your site.

4. Get both ‘Size’ and ‘Spacing’ correct – With different mobile devices offering different ways of navigating a web page (touchscreen, trackball, directional pad, etc.), it’s essential that all users have an easy time clicking/selecting the buttons and links they want. This means ensuring click-able items are both ‘big’ enough and that there is enough ‘space’ between links to reduce the likelihood of a customer clicking on the wrong link. This can be seen in the header on Halfords’ mobile site and in the lists of products and categories.  Also bear in mind that a top / down approach to the layout (as opposed to top/down & across) is more usable.

5. Make forms as easy to fill out as possible. Completing forms is arduous and difficult on mobile devices. This means reducing the number of fields to what is absolutely essential is worth debating. But also ensure that the customer can easily see the label of the field they are on if the mobile device automatically zooms in on the current field. We were able to achieve this on Halfords’ mobile site by placing the labels above their respective fields. We also made use of the new tel and email HTML5 input types to provide (on supporting devices) users with an onscreen keyboard specific to that type of data.

6. Liquefy your layout – With each device having its own screen resolution, some of which allow you to change orientation from portrait to landscape, it’s important that your pages not only work in the space available, but also take advantage of any extra space available after an orientation toggle.

7. Remember ‘Designing for mobile’ isn’t the same as ‘Designing for mobile phones‘ - Mobile phones, and in particular smart-phones, are rapidly becoming mainstream gadgets.  But that’s half the story.  Consider other mobile and pervasive devices as part of your mobile strategy. The iPad is already popular but new Android powered tablets such as the Motorola Zoom (which was hailed as 2011′s must have gadget – see Engadgets Best of CES2011 post) raise the mobility stakes considerably higher. We haven’t scratched the surface of where in-store pervasive devices are going in 2011 and beyond either.

8. Consider providing telephone assistance every step of the way – We all make mistakes or have questions when buying items online.  As FAQ’s or very detailed searches are harder to make and drill into on a mobile device, consider a regular ‘Click-to-Call’ call-out as part of the page design, or a ‘Find your Nearest Store’ capability, in particular if you have already integrated your sales channels effectively.

9. (Re)Consider ‘font’ and ‘colour’ – Because phones are used in areas where laptops and PC’s are not (in highly reflective or poorly lit circumstances, perhaps), be aware that contrast is an important consideration to make. Additionally bear in mind that customers ‘scan-read’ heavily on mobile phones, so avoid upper case (WHICH, BASED ON RESEARCH FINDINGS IS HARDER TO READ) wherever possible, but particularly on product details pages or during the check-out process.

10. Think ‘Cross-Channel’ – Despite the fact we’d all like to close a sales immediately via mobile devices, chances are its not going to happen all of the time.  This can be for many reasons, most notably because consumer confidence in mobile payment is still low and because the mobile channel is simply a single component of a complex cross-channel engagement cycle.  As a result you should make the interaction between channels simple and seamless. We’ve already mentioned potentially adding a prominent ‘Click-to-Call’ button, but additionally make ‘Find your Nearest Store’, ‘Stock Level’ and ‘Reserve & Collect’ intrinsic aspects of appropriate page layouts to optimise overall conversion rates.

11. *Bonus* -> Leverage baked-in Social Networking – Bear in mind that with mobile devices comes built-in Social Networking opportunity.  Consider optimising pages to allow shoppers to ‘Share’, ‘Comment’ or ‘Like’ products as readily as possible.  

Have we missed anything? Hopefully these front-end focused points highlight the salient front-end considerations for mobile eCommerce today but please share any additional ideas; we’d love to hear your comments.

Finally, confused about the opportunity m-commerce brings? You may find this worth reading (subscription required) “Mobile Statistics – An eEconsulting Report “

Here is a decent infographic (by TestKing) that illustrates just how popular social networking is.

We’ve recently blogged about how huge a role f-commerce will play in a merchants Retail Strategy, and how Android and iPhone Apps are revolutionising traditional offline buying decisions, and we’ve also discussed fully transactional mobile eCommerce payment.

But every so often it is well worth taking a step back, and looking at the broader social networking statistics. Wow.

Everything You Need to Know About Social Networks by Tech King

Here’s 9 areas to watch (and perhaps react to) in relation to front-end eCommerce website development initiatives during 2011. It is by no means exhaustive, but reflects a few of the overriding trends and movements that will impact front-end development.

We’ve deliberately steered away from merely ‘design’ specific trends.  For those you could go here, it’s a pretty good list with a little overlap on ours.  For digital marketing trends look no further than Ashley Friedlein’s list on eConsultancy.com, and for the mega-trends out there take a look at Marian Salzman’s Euro RSC Worldwide PR report and her “11 Trends for 2011″.

*Update* 19/01/2011: Retail Week just published their “What’s hot in eTail” list, which is more generic but worth a read (requires Retail Week Subscription)
*Update* 24/01/2010: Fortune and CNN Money today discuss how smartphone growth in 2011 that could totally eclipse anything we’ve seen before. 

So here it is: 9 areas to watch at the front-end of eCommerce this year

1. “f-commerce” becomes a verb Beyond mere fan pages and ‘like’ buttons, merchants will re-focus on Facebook and look to develop eCommerce websites completely within Facebook.   With more than 500 million active users (50% of active users logging onto Facebook in any given day, the average user having 130 friends and people spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, more here) the potential ROI appears to be huge. And yet developing an eCommerce solution inside Facebook is not without its potential drawbacks.  In this post, Michael Hoffman remarks (in the comments) that firstly, “Facebook provides no service level agreements. Therefore, if Facebook is down, you are down. If your app is performing poorly, there is no one you can call directly. All applications are treated equally.” Michael’s second point is equally poignant…. so let’s think about Facebook security for a moment…. it’s a fact that Facebook profiles are sometimes hacked so is there a knock-on issue in this regard towards f-commerce? And what about the .api, the PCI compliance, the optimisation of Facebook eCommerce stores for mobile devices, and payment….wow, the list goes on (and that’s not even counting the growing WhiteWalling trend as recently discussed by Drew Benvie).  What is certain is that those merchants that get to grips with any potential issues first, will also see the upside first; and already pioneers like JC Penney are putting their best foot forward already as are ASOS in Europe (n.b. ASOS link requires Retail Week subscription). On the flip side, on the merchant eCommerce websites itself, there is little doubt that exposing a shoppers social graph will unearth recommendations and reviews that an algorithm simply would not. I can’t think of many people who wouldn’t be delighted to see what their social graph (or certainly a selection of their social graph) has been buying and saying about particular products and services.
2. The Mobile Web Explosion If last year was the year that mobile commerce finally arrived (actually it was the year before last imho), expect to hear the herd stampeding this year. Mobile internet use is going to keep rising, and along with it, so will the number of mobile versions of existing sites needing to be developed or thought through.  Think about access by phones, tablets, even eReaders plus a host of other devices – and think about it strategically would be our opinion.  Apps no doubt will continue to be developed, but they’ll find their place within retail strategy (and it will probably be less important than your average app developer will tell you today) because really it’s the mobile web that will explode.  In the short term, payment is going to be a key area to nail down in transactional eCommerce terms and those that thought about payment strategically in the first place should have little problem exploiting investments already made on their conventional eCommerce sites (which is what we were able to do for Halfords and ICI/Dulux).  And remember, where there’s payment there is also security to worry about and ‘NFC’ (near field communications) and ‘payment wallets’ and ‘mobile vouchers’ will muddy the confusing water for many.
3. Yay. Internet Explorer 9
   We can all look forward to the release of IE9 (rumoured to be Q1), and along with it better support for CSS3 and HTML5.  It’s so easy optimising complex eCommerce sites for the myriad of browser types and versions that another big release won’t make much difference will it? Hmmmm (See point #9).
   
4. Ahem. Yay.  Firefox 4
   I rest my case.  It too, is expected, to be released, this year.  The punctuation just doesn’t do this whole cross browser compatibility nightmare justice, but alas, our perspective on all this is covered in point #9.
   
5. Web Standards become the standard.  All hail CSS3 and HTML5
   On the upside, with IE9 joining the list of browsers supporting CSS3 and HTML5, expect to see these standards even more widely used.  Interpretation aside, adhering to web standards in eCommerce is very important for many reasons (which we won’t go into detail about here) but two aspects that are very relevant are improved ‘Search’ and ‘Accessibility’.   Then again, add ‘Page weight’, ‘Ease of Maintenance’ and ‘Extensibility’ and benefits relating to the support for access by multiple devises – and everyone in eCommerce should get the message. Maybe grabbing more headlines during the year will be CSS3, mainly because it’s more designer-y (and designers write about this stuff a lot) but to be fair eCommerce site experience WILL become richer, deeper, with a greater sense of dimension than previously; in part (at least) due to CSS3. Whilst ‘text & box shadows’, ’rounded’ corners, ‘gradients’, ‘animations’ & ‘transitions’, a wider variety of fonts and multiple background images will get lots of design-led attention, on an eCommerce site all new design possibilities will need to be thoroughly A/B and multi-variate tested anyway (the results are always surprising) so lets not get too carried away for designs-sake without testing.
   Importantly, whilst HTML5 isn’t going to replace flash altogether, it will at least put it back where it reigns.  So for now and the foreseable future, HTML5 and Flash will simply co-exist.  Proof of that can be seen with one of our partner’s in eCommerce 10CMS, who is helping our retail clients leverage flash components on eCommerce sites in the area of interactive merchandising (with non flash alternatives also served) with stunning conversion results. Their approach in the future is that designers/merchandisers/whoever will be able to serve content in basic html, flash or HTML5. Choices.  Great.  So to say Flash will disappear in eCommerce because of HTML5 is pretty nonsense, but getting the balance right isn’t.
6. Landing Page optimisation & cross channel optimisation
   Online marketing vs. offline marketing vs. traditional marketing vs. digital marketing.  Phew.  For many (usually vendors) it’s still a noisy battleground, but for some merchants who’ve moved away from ‘which’ tactic to pick, to establishing a genuine blend of activities, there’s big benefits to be had from measured, optimised and fully integrated activities.  A great example of where this is going to come home to roost before our very eyes in eCommerce circles during 2011 is the optimisation of (digital) landing pages from (offline) Quick Response (QR) codes on packaging, shelf labels and (whisper it) traditional direct mail. By encouraging bar code or QR code scanning a customer can be taken to an optimised page where they can read rich contextual product information, or in turn be encouraged (post purchase perhaps) to share product comments using audio, photos or video.  The real skill is of course integrating everything, everywhere – and those merchants that can get nearer to integrated marcoms across all customer touchpoints will benefit most.  So whilst we expect to see greater use of QR codes on products and adverts to send customers to (many more) product and offer landing pages in the first instance (it was just an example) – the real battle ground is going to be integrating cross channel activities and having a genuine handle on customer behaviour via cross-channel analytics.
   
7. Tighter Social Network Integration
   Whilst we have already discussed Facebook in a little detail, overall there will be a surge toward tapping into established 3rd party social networks.  Clearly links (to-and-from) Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blippy, Foursquare, Amazon, LinkedIn, Go Try It On, Shopkick and Group On and the like WILL have their merits (albeit sometimes merely volume based) but really that’s only half the social network story.  Whilst many major online shops have now realised that it is actually pretty difficult to establish their own social networks (e.g. HMV’s www.getcloser.com failed last year) many will persist; and for those that do so the rewards may well be significant.  Those that maintain their own social functionality (perhaps combined with simple hooks into established social networks as well) will tightly embed and integrate social networking directly into their main eCommerce sites using services like Pluck (which we have implemented before) or KickApps. ASOS is one retailer who is a long way down this road already within the eCommerce industry with its ASOS Life portal that combines blogs, forums, ideas as well as an online market place for clothing. But it’s not just fashion retailers getting in on the act – Sainsbury’s and ASDA have significant presence already too.
   
8. Location Location Location
   First aired in May 2001, Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer are going from strength to strength on their hit show….oh hang on….From Gowalla to FourSquare, to ‘check-in’s', ‘augmented reality’ and ‘mobile vouchers’ – location based offerings are rapidly becoming the eCommerce solution de-rigour.  But beyond the hype (and there’s been a lot) and the fact that 2011 might not even be the year for mainstream adoption, in eCommerce circles ‘location’ services will rapidly become a pretty important component of a genuinely joined up multi channel retail strategy.  With the potential to optimise retail operations in areas such as Supply Chain & Logistics, Merchandising and Store Operations, “location location location” takes on an altogether more complex, and potentially rewarding, topic for eCommerce executives in 2011.  And with smart phones likely to become practically de-facto during the next few years, delivering mobile solutions that leverage both ‘location’ and ‘proximity’  to deliver a better customer experience, are simply a must.  We can certainly see ‘check-in’ promotions happening more often already in the US (e.g. the first 500 checkins instore receiving a free prize or a free voucher) but actually campaigns that focus on the ‘volume’ of followers will be less important than those that centre on the number of ‘influential’ customers a brand has; and as the commercial value of ‘influence’ and ‘trust’ in the social web begins to manifest, merchants will not only need to time their run toward the social web correctly, but also get their aligment spot on.  Look out for Facebook ‘Deals’ in the near future in the UK, and ‘local’ being the location battleground (offers around the corner from home/work, or where you are right now), and the continued rise of Google Places.  And they’ll be a return of older names in the mix like ‘Yell’ who understand locality (and advertising and SEO) pretty damn well.
9. The end of the browser compatibility war This year the focus on browsers will shift from negativity to positivity – and looking ‘forwards’ not ‘backwards’.  The web has changed, and it is no longer a one-size-fits-all arena and nothing like an eCommerce site brings that into sharp focus.  Complex, dynamic websites are going to look different on an iPad to an Android phone to a site viewed on IE8 etc etc.  Supporting different browsers simply does not mean that every eyeball should see the exact same thing.  And if anyone in eCommerce front end design has enough time and money to spend on IE6 vs. better desktop browsers and the host of mobile browsers then I’d be frankly pretty surprised. Here’s the rub.  If it looks different in different browsers its not a bug.  And lets take it one step further: Browser capabilities are to do with the browser maker – not the designer. It really is time to look forward not backward on browser compatibility.

   What’s missing from our list? Please make some suggestions in the comments section.

I was really excited to see that JC Penney launched a Facebook store this week, a move that will be replicated by many merchants in 2011, as they clamour to increase sales as a result of the social networking sites huge popularity.

I only had time to take a quick glance, and I can’t say that I bothered to go too far through the buying process, but a few things jumped out at me immediately, both good and bad.  On the whole though, I think this type of Facebook application is a sure sign of things to come – so fair play to JC Penney being the first major US retailer to offer proper online shopping on Facebook as opposed to a simple fan page with links.

(Click on images to enlarge)

I’ll start with the negative stuff.  As an embedded application, the navigation is slightly ‘awkward’ feeling compared to a conventional eCommerce website.  That’s fairly understandable, plus I believe that as applications like this grow in popularity, users will learn that this is the way apps ‘work’ inside facebook on a desktop.  But the app also felt very ‘mobile-like’ and I wasn’t so keen on this.  I assume it’s this way because of the way the application needs to be served, plus the fact that Facebook is assessed so readily on mobile and smart phones already (so it’s been optimised for these users first and foremost).  But the downside is that content is pretty minimal and simple, and I have to be honest it feels a little strange when I’m on a beefy laptop as opposed to my Smart phone.

The JC Penney Facebook store claims to be ‘fully integrated’.  I am not sure what that means other than the application is fully ‘enclosed’, i.e. you don’t leave Facebook to browse, register, purchase or recommend or review items.  This is great – and not to be underestimated as an approach – as personally I am not so keen on the hand-off to another domain part way through a transaction and I’d guess I am not alone.

I did spot a few glitches (again possibly understandable given this is very new?) that suggest the ‘integration’ isn’t as complete as many customers might desire.  For instance, a few items I browsed and selected to purchase were not available to buy, although I wasn’t made aware of this when browsing.  That’s frustrating and doesn’t happen on decent conventional eCommerce stores.  And a few images are missing here and there, which combined with the skinny, ‘mobile-feel’ means that the experience isn’t amazing.  Plus I also noticed that with Google Chrome, a few of the alert messages appeared over the application navigation which was a little bit annoying.

But to be fair that’s all sour grapes.  On a positive note what I liked was the proposition consistency – ‘free shipping’ on overs over $69, ‘free shipping to store’, and ‘store returns’ supported.  This is a great confidence booster and possibly hints at further multi-channel integration to follow.  And I also liked the search capability and the faceted / filtered navigation facilities provided.  This gave me confidence and felt natural – a useful combination of a standard eCommerce site and a proper mobile website.   And the way you skip through pages was simple and pretty usable in my opinion (I’d much rather this approach than a page a mile long).  And furthermore a simple, but effective, solution for customer’s on the move is that it’s easy to find a traditional store with the ‘find a store’ facility.

All in all I liked what I saw.  I’ve been waiting for Facebook to be more than a fan-page festival in terms of eCommerce – and here it is.  There is no doubt that M&S, ASOS, Arcadia Group and the like, will be following with their own facebook stores in the very near future simply because there are more than 550M facebookers out there.

Facebook is a channel that won’t be ignored.  And JC Penney is there at the forefront of it all.  Already with 1.3 million fans, they should be about to truly benefit from social commerce in the way that makes most businesses sit up and take notice.  Dollars in the cash register.  All hail f-Commerce!

I recently wrote about Facebook’s ‘Universal like Button’, but Mitchell Harper (co-founder of BigCommerce a provider of shopping cart software) has also written a nice post on Mashable.com which discusses Facebook’s .api based way of accessing what Facebook calls a user’s “Open Graph” ; the list of everything he or she has “liked” across the entire web.

In the post, Mitchell outlines the impact of the Open Graph for eCommerce.  These are his 5 predictions:

Go here to read more from Mitchell.  I’ll need to think about his predictions more.  But I’d like to make some observations:

1. With such a key element of an eCommerce website being developed to leverage Facebook’s Open Graph .api  and their information [i.e. product browse and product Information pages] will the .api uptime be good enough for leading merchants and professional eCommerce solution builders? With these pages being highly optimised for conversion, merchants won’t want to lose credibility (and customers) at such a vital stage of an online purchase by displaying broken links, images and missing content.
2. For this to ‘tip’ into the mainstream, will Facebook be able to satisfy those engaged in the privacy debate? Remember Beacon?  There is a massive difference in privacy ‘politics’ across different geographies and will Facebook be able to develop a flexible enough .api to satisfy the differing cultures and styles of eCommerce globally? I can’t help but think that the ‘opt-in’ vs. ‘opt-out’ issues will be infinitely more poignant when the outcome is information shared on 3rd party eCommerce sites.

Should these issues be negated, there is little doubt that those merchants that have been involved in delivering a Facebook presence for some time are in line to benefit first.  They will have established fan groups who are most likely to share their Open Graph.

And in terms of a single ‘big win’ in social-commerce, Facebook’s Open Graph appears to be an initiative worth analysing and assessing.  Just how quickly benefits or drawbacks manifest remains to be seen.  Yet somehow I can’t see too many leading merchants simply ‘waiting to see what happens’.  Facebook’s platform and reach is simply too powerful to ignore.

“Facebook Open Graph” image taken from “Facebook Cookbook, Building Applications to Grow Your Facebook Empire.” http://www.oreilly.de/catalog/9780596518172/toc.html

There are plenty of rumours that Facebook may be aiming to “weave itself more tightly into the fabric of the Web” with a universal “Like” button.  This facility, it is thought, will enable users to easily share their views on any site, product or service.

I’ve been thinking about this in the context of eCommerce, and its clear that customers may benefit from this type of facility.  Have a look at  my mocked up screens. (Click to enlarge images).

Being able to see the universal number of ‘likes’ would in all likelihood be a useful gauge of overall interest in a product, and I’d be interested to see how users would contribute and be influenced by this type of information – particularly if they can see how many of their ‘friends’ have ‘liked’ the product in question.  Additionally how would this kind of service complement a series of more detailed authored reviews which are promoted by vendors such as Bazaarvoice, Power Reviews and Reevoo?

Clearly there’s an impact at the Facebook profile page too, here’s my mock up on that.  Clearly merchants would be very keen to continue there outreach into Facebook’s personal profiles.

Overall I think at face value this represents a win-win for customers and merchants, although I should imagine that there would be a degree of fear on behalf of merchants when it comes to introducing potential clicks aways from the online basket.

What is also exciting about this type of service is that it will enable Facebook to capture more and more detailed information about what customers like on the web; which may in turn lead to more intelligent targeted advertising.

All eyes will be toward Facebooks F8 Conference which takes place tommorow.