Next up, Keith Liu, Senior Director of Strategy at Blast Radius will discuss The Future of Communities and e-Commerce.

Keith is taking the audience through the history of retail’s evolution from single-store through big box to e-Tailing, focusing on the dramatic increase in variety. He makes the really interesting point that this evolution, however, has had little direct impact on experience. The power of online selling to this point has really been more about efficiency in procurement. He argues that many of the efficiency-oriented e-commerce features that have been layered into sites to this point will soon – if they haven’t already – reach the point of diminishing returns. The focus needs to be on starting conversations with customers that will turn customers into advocates. This, of course, requires being an “open brand” adhering to the Web 2.0 tenets of sincere, transparent participation (i.e., this is NOT an opportunity to “spin” a story).

That’s the first time I’ve heard the word today. Advocates. Think about it. That’s what we’re really after isn’t it? Sure loyalty is great. And, yes, many here today have talked about the fact that friends, family and others “like me” are the most trusted source of recommendations. But advocacy is something more than that. It is more active. It is more emotional. He uses the NAU philanthropy program as an example.

In this world of infinite and immediate choice, is it possible to create not only brand loyalists, but brand advocates? How are you doing it?

[tags] Insight Live 2007, Blast Radius, e-commerce, online communities, Web 2.0, social networking, NAU [/tags]

The panel examining how to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies for online selling is kicking off. It’s an impressive lineup with Gartner’s Gene Alvarez moderating and a panel of experts from Web 2.0 companies PowerReviews, BazaarVoice and Scene 7, as well as e-commerce executives from Road Runner Sports, The Finish Line and Vitamin Shoppe Direct.

The ongoing industry discussion about Web 2.0 is almost always from a consumer/user perspective, so it’s really interesting to sit through Web 2.0 sessions that are intended for sellers. One persistent theme is about who is in control (see post about David Towers’ session).

A really interesting point was raised by BazaarVoice about customer reviews giving customers a megaphone. If they need to, they will use it to shout at you, even if it’s not about a product review, per se. So before implementing reviews, make sure things like customer service are operating the way they need to. PowerReviews added that customer reviews are supposed to be about product reviews, not about company, service or price. Both companies agreed that you need to make sure the user communicty understands that at the outset, so you moderate reviews appropriately if they veer off the topic of product performance.

Also, Vitamin Shoppe pointed out that what the community aspects of Web 2.0 technologies do is force the company to live up to its brand promise, or risk the very vocal ire of customers. You can’t control what the customers are going to say, except by doing the best you can to reflect your brand in the online experience you create. Vitamin Shoppe starts by observing actual customers shopping in actual stores and monitoring their experiences.

This actually points to another emerging theme…the idea that customers’ online experiences should mimic their offline experiences (assuming the latter is an optimal one, I assume!)

A question was posed about how online sellers can determine where to start with Web 2.0. Several panel members answered quite correctly that they need to understand what drives their business, prototype, test, experiment. All of these are reasonable responses.

But Gene Alvarez couldn’t resist falling back into analyst mode (answering questions instead of asking them) and really boiled it down from a rich media perspective:

• Make it as easy as possible to take the money - use single page check-out
• Make the product self-descriptive – if a user mouses over it, pop up the information

While the bluntness of Gene’s response got some laughs, he really has a point. Let’s face it, people are shopping online because they want to buy something. Perhaps the best thing sellers can do is to let them do it easily.

[tags] Insight Live 2007, e-commerce, Gartner, Gene Alvarez, Web 2.0 [/tags]

David Towers, Managing Partner, Avenue A/Razorfisg is doing a session on ”Evolving E-Commerce Strategies and Tactics using Web 2.0.”

David is a former retailer, having previously run e-commerce at J. Crew and Liz Claiborne, so he’s not just an “agency guy” trying to generate fees with the cool new online stuff retailers “have” to do. In fact, he goes to lengths to point out a couple of the “obvious areas” that he recommends most retails NOT get involved yet.

David really had to jam through examples of a lot of tools in action. I believe I’ve captured the categorization correctly (and, if not, I hope he’ll correct me in the comments!)

Must-have today

• Blogs & evolved user generated content
• Product reviews are 1.0
• Retailer POV is 2.0 - David uses Ice.com as an example of what not to do, in this instance - “news” is that there is a sale; the user questions aren’t useful to a general population)
• Social networking
• Join MySpace or another existing social network - He says “Why not? it floors me that companies trying to be hip and trendy fail to put up a simple MySpace page.”
• Make your own – examples include American Eagle Outfitters’ yearbook program and Target’s helping users run their book club
• Let your customer make their own social network – check out Ning user Marcos’s own Coca-Cola network
• Rich Media, AJAX, enhanced visualization
• Guided selling (no page reload; no boxes around products; Target, Coca-cola, Nike, Best Buy)
• Visual navigation (products jump out at you when you mouse over; Breville, Disney)
• All that said, nothing beats good photography (Bvlgari)
• Video
• Examples include the Engadget “unboxing” and BlendTech’s “Will it blend?” video
• Widgets and gadgets
• Lots of potential b/c it helps transcend browser by getting on the desktop; getting in front of consumer before they even open their browsers

No there, there yet 

 

• Virtual Worlds
• Poster child American Apparel ROI is unclear; some backlash because the company failed to engage in the community property
• Mobile
• No clear homerun in mobile for e-Retailer selling things online (not talking about ringtones and games); phone is too personal a means of communication; big future in mobile, but aren’t here right now

Finally, David closed with 5 Things Every Dignital Executive Should Know About Web 2.0

1. Your Web site is like everything and nothing you’ve ever known
2. Distribution will trump destination – we are about to see the end of channels
3. Accountability will rule the day – everything is infinitely trackable
4. Today’s Web is in its “Uncle Milty” stage – it’s Web 2.0, but it’s ONLY Web 2.0
5. The consumer is not in control – sellers are still in control of their brands; you make the decisions, you are in control, make good use of it

OK, I apologize to making you wait to the end of a long post to bring out the WOW, but read #5 again. Doesn’t that just fly in the face of everything we “know” about Web 2.0?? But, when you think about it, is it really crazy? While it wasn’t intended to be about brands, but maybe that that old saw about letting go of the thing you love holds water here.

What say you?

Sitting here listening to the giant biotech company Genentech talk about their e-service strategies with ATG. You know, this really brings it home: when you’ve got literally thousands of scientists creating drugs that are potentially going to save countless lives, you need to be able to provide quality, consistent – and most important timely – service for them. Talk about mission critical.

Well, we’re off and running here in Charleston. Monday’s general session kicked off with a fascinating look at the rise of personal brands and the online consumer’s desire to create, share, and influence – and how companies need to be leveraging this trend. Kelly Mooney, author and President/Chief Experience Officer, Resource Interactive delivered the keynote.

Kelly is encouraging companies to open up and tap customers to help build and drive the brand. What’s interesting online right now centers on the creativity of the consumer – the Web, it’s now clear, is not just about selling and buying, though the activities of today’s power users, the “digital millenial,” can greatly influence sales. Companies need to recognize this and act! In Kelly’s view, open brands foster communities of consumers that engage – it’s all about pull versus push. Open brands are co-created, and there is dialog.

Indeed, digital millenials, those in their teens and early twenties, are a very unique generation. They rely on community, they are highly viral, they are all about influence, and – interestingly enough – they hate email (equate with snail mail).

Kelly talks about “iCitizens” – i.e. an amazon.com reviewer that reads 5 books a day, and has 13,000 reviews(!), a 79 year old YouTube video star with a huge number of hits, an uber Avon lady, who can boast of 7000 hits a day on her beauty blog, and who is changing the face of Avon without any actually interaction with the company! What is your brand doing to leverage this phenomenon, or – compete with these voices?

ATG CEO Bob Burke kicked things off with mention of, ahem – shameless plug here – growing revenues, growing profits, and growing cash flow/position here at ATG, and mention of the incredible new brands we’ve won since we all last gathered in the Las Vegas desert for the 2006, user conference. That’s all good stuff.

Welcome, from sunny and warm Charleston, South Carolina, site of ATG Insight Live 2007! it’s the biggest ATG conference in the company’s history, and we could not be more excited! (today’s press release was not spin – it’s true!)
We’re chomping on the first morning’s breakfast, ready to head into the opening sessions/keynote, with Kelly Mooney, noted e-commerce guru!

More on the opening general session, in a bit…

As you’ve probably noticed, things have been a little quiet on the blog while we prepare for this year’s annual user conference, Insight Live 2007, which kicks off this coming Sunday, April 29. So, while I expect the light posting trend to continue for the remainder of the week, that will change radically next Monday when we start live blogging select sessions (see below) from the conference.

In addition to the session summaries we will be providing, we will also have several Internet kiosks with the blog up, so attendees can post their comments immediately, as well. All posts from and related to the conference will be tagged and categorized as Insight Live 2007.

While nothing can replace being there, we hope you’ll take this opporunity to share in what is sure to be our best Insight Live yet!

We expect to blog from the following sessions:

Monday, April 30

• Opening General Session – Bob Burke, President and CEO, ATG
• Keynote: The Open Brand - Kelly Mooney, President and Chief Experience Officer, Resource Interactive
• Keynote: Next Generation e-Commerce – yours truly
• e-Commerce Trends and ATG New Product Preview - ATG
• When Every Minute Counts: How Inspired Customer Service Turned Around a 24×7 User Community – Genentech
• Panel: Leveraging Web 2.0 – New Technologies to Maximize Web Selling – Gartner (moderator), PowerReviews, BazaarVoice, Scene7, The Finish Line, Vitamin Shoppe Direct
• The Future of Communities and e-Commerce – Blast Radius

Tuesday, May 1

• Keynote: The Long Tail – Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired
• Executive Panel: Sustaining e-Commerce Growth in an Extremely Competitive Environment – Chris Anderson (moderator), CVS.com, Handango, Neiman Marcus, Bluefly
• Keynote: Best Practices in Click to Call Solutions – John Federman, CEO, eStara
• Mobile Computing and the Digital Media Business – Handango
• Panel: Maximizing Investments to Attract the Right Visitors – Casual Male, Irwin Union Bank, Channel Advisor, Sapient

Wednesday, May 2

• eStara Click to Call and Click to Chat: Best Practices and Customers in Action – ATG eStara
• A Pragmatic Approach to Personalization: Implementation Best Practices – eStara ATG
• Closing General Session – Bob Steelhammer, Vice President/Chief Web Executive, AT&T/Cingular Wireless
• Keynote: The Evolving Expectations of Today’s Online Shopper – Tamara Mendelsohn, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research
• Keynote: ATG Product and Technology Directions – Robert Brazile, Chief Technology Officer, ATG

[UPDATE: I inadvertently switched the presenters of two of the Wednesday sessions. Corrected above.]

[tags] Insight Live, e-commerce [/tags]

We have a lot going on here this month as we prepare for our annual user conference, Insight Live (which we will be blogging from this year). But in reading what various analysts have to say about a variety of topics relevant to e-commerce, there are two recent posts that stand out:

Jupiter retail analyst Patti Freeman Evans ponders the convergence of community/social networking sites with e-commerce, asking us to think about how and where it makes the most sense to provide more “interactive” components in the browsing and buying processes. An interesting read–I encourage you to check it out.

Also, Forrester’s blog is offering a peek into its Marketing Forum, including these remarks from Forrester Research Chairman and CEO, George F. Colony. on the six things he tells CEOs: Websites need to meet the needs of customers; customer loyalty “owns” you; and my personal favorite–great marketing + great technology is the only way forward. We couldn’t agree more.

More thoughts to come, but in the meantime we encourage you to take a look at what these folks are discussing and share your thoughts.

[tags] e-commerce, online marketing, Jupiterresearch, Forrester, social networking, community shopping, website functionality, Insight Live [/tags]

A couple of us were interviewed recently by a key industry publication to discuss what the world of e-commerce had in store in the coming 5-10 years. We talked about some pretty “out there” stuff, which I’ll be exploring more in future posts. But while that part of the discussion may have been the most fun, it strikes me that when you look at the early part of that 5-10 year window, things may not be as radically different as you’d expect. In fact, almost all the pieces of innovation that will lead e-commerce in the next 5 years are visible today. In the next half-decade, they will simply become practical, reliable and widely deployed. Consider:

• The single biggest opportunity facing e-commerce is what Chris Anderson calls the Long Tail – the Web gives merchants a way to sell a wider variety of products to more people in more niches (I’ve talked about this before)
• The challenge is discovery – helping buyers find what they want. The more choice, the more potential for shopping gridlock
• The solution will be the seemingly oxymoronic combination of personalization and the Web 2.0 concept of the wisdom of crowds. Buyers want to be shown offers that are relevant to their own individual needs and tastes – the more relevant the offer, the higher the conversion rate and the bigger the basket size. But deciding what offer may be most relevant to an individual may be best gleaned by examining the behavior and opinions of other people like them

The technology to enable all of this is largely available today (ATG has been a personalization expert for years, user opionions and reviews flourish, there’s no end to social networking/bookmarking/media/callitwhatyoulike services available). What we’re going to see in the next 5 years is online sellers sorting through what to adopt and how best to integrate it and build unique features with it.

Then it really gets fun…

[tags] chris anderson, long tail, the long tail, e-commerce, personalization, Web 2.0, social media, social networking, wisdom of crowds [/tags]