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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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AUGUST 31, 2004
Taking E-Commerce to the Next Level [Page 2 of 2] VIRTUAL PAINT. With so much data available at their fingertips, more retailers will be using Web analytics to personalize e-mail. For example, customers might get an e-mail letting them know that a sweater they perused but never bought is now available for 10% off. In retailing lingo this is called "remarketing." DoubleClick (DCLK ) recently launched a new version of its analytic tool called Site Advance, which interacts with its DARTMail product to send remarketing messages to customers. DoubleClick Senior Vice-President Court Cunningham says the company's research has found an eight-times better response rate with remarketing than a standard e-mail campaign. Also important, if less whizzy, retailers' Web sites are finally achieving long-promised levels of interactivity using improved visual technologies. Home-furnishing stores are now offering "configurators," which give customers the ability to change the floor covering or paint on the walls of model rooms. HomeDepot.com (HD ) recently added a new application created by Laszlo Systems for Behr Paints, which allows customers to preview color selections on an assortment of sample walls. INFORMATION, PLEASE. Retailers say higher-quality, interactive images are driving sales, too. Lamps Plus, for one, is using rich-media software from Scene7 that allows customers to manipulate high-resolution photos, zooming in to see the texture of fabric, spin products around for a 360-degree view, or sample color swatches. Lamps Plus says the software has helped increase sales on its Web site and from in-store kiosks because customers can get a more realistic idea of a broad range of products. Creating a richer, more realistic online shopping experience is just one way retailers are getting customers to buy more. They're also employing so-called smart-pricing technology to optimize how much they charge for items on their sites. Plus, they're learning they can generate more sales by adding more information, such as customer ratings and reviews. "Online shoppers want more information around a product purchase," says Cunningham. DoubleClick's research finds that the number of pages customers view before a purchase has increased from 9 to 11 in the past year. Forrester research highlights HSN's message boards, Circuit City's (CC ) buying guides, and eBags' customer reviews as examples of the increase in information provided. The main difference between such features today and in the past: "Integration," writes Forrester e-commerce analyst Carrie Johnson in an August report. "Retailers will now integrate customer comments from message boards and buying guide checklists right onto the product detail page." Of course, Amazon (AMZN ) and eBay (EBAY ) are the kings at creating communities of shoppers and mining customer data to give users a richer experience and generate more sales. NO RUSH. Too much computer-driven personalization can backfire, though, as Tom Cruise's character learned in the Big Brother-style world of Minority Report. "Retailers have to be careful to make sure shoppers don't feel they're being watched a little too closely," says Freeman Evans. That's why SpotMeeting's Yeum is happy to take a slow and steady pace in bringing his brand of e-commerce to the next level. Your favorite clothing retailer won't be broadcasting a personalized message to you as you walk by for a while yet. But Yeum, for one, is confident that'll happen sooner than you might think.
 By Amey Stone in New York
BW MALL
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