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Coverage
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July 05, 2006
Interactivity features can boost e-commerce revenue
By Debby Young
Statistics show that interactivity helps keep visitors on a site longer and converts more browsers to buyers.
In Summary
" Interactive technology such as live chat, interactive catalogs and three-dimensional (3-D) modeling gives online buyers more control over their shopping experience and draws them deeper into the buying process.
" Intuitive content management tools take the burden off the IT department by giving marketing staff the autonomy to make content changes and e-commerce merchandising decisions without technical assistance.
Today, consumers demand that their Web shopping experience be more like visiting a physical store. E-retail giants like Lands' End have responded by using the latest technology to take that interaction to a new level. For example, Lands' End customers can create virtual models of themselves with a series of templates (body shape, height, weight, facial features and so on) and simulate trying on outfits they are considering buying.
With interactive tools like live chat starting at less than US$25 a month per operator, even midsize businesses can afford to incorporate them into their e-commerce sites. Gavin Finn, president and chief executive officer of Kaon Interactive in Maynard, Massachusetts, says, "Studies have shown that conversion rates on sites that let shoppers ask questions or interact with a product increase from 17 to 63 percent over sites that simply use static images and one-way communication." From an information technology (IT) management perspective, simple step-by-step installation menus and plug-and-play designs make these interactive tools even easier to integrate into existing Web site technology.
The interactive technology you choose depends on the complexity of your company's product or service offerings and the way your customers prefer to shop.
Live chat:
plug-and-play enhancement
With a live chat button embedded on your Web site, visitors can open up a chat window to get answers to questions on the spot. Live chat is more scalable and less expensive than phone support, because one operator can handle multiple chats simultaneously. Built-in wizards allow your IT staff to add simple HTML code to your pages, test and customize chat options with straightforward point-and-click menus.
Most live chat solutions, like BoldChat and LivePerson, offer enhanced customer relationship management (CRM) versions that compile detailed visitor data, creating qualified sales leads for your marketing organization.
Interactive catalogs: content management without IT assistance
Last year, online catalogs represented 78 percent of all the catalogs published in North America. XML technology can turn those static pages into an interactive Web experience.
Maplin Electronics uses EasyFlip E-Catalog, interactive online brochure technology from Israel-based ActivePoint that creates the illusion of turning physical pages and allows customers to click on images to get further details. According to Chris West, Internet channel manager for Maplin, a British electronics retailer, conversion rates for visitors using the EasyFlip technology is up to 11 percent for new customers and 17 percent for existing customers beating the electronics industry e-commerce average of between 1 and 2 percent.
Microsoft Commerce Server, the Microsoft platform for e-commerce, lets you bundle a number of personalized marketing and customer profiling features into the interactive catalog so that you can dynamically serve everything from product mix, page flow, content mix and pricing based on the visitor's profile. A software development kit and an extensive library of prebuilt business components can help you create a reliable, interactive operating environment with fewer lines of code. And because the technology integrates automatically with the shopping cart, shoppers can drop items into their cart without leaving the catalog.
If you use an application like Microsoft Content Management System (CMS) to deliver the pages of your online catalog, you can shift the burden of updating Web pages onto your marketing staff. CMS allows this through advanced graphics editors and templates for nontechnical staff to make revisions without any knowledge of HTML or other Web technologies. Thomas Obrey, chief operating officer of PixelMEDIA, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based interactive Web developer, says that in order to respond quickly to new market opportunities, business managers should be able to run 90 percent of the day-to-day activity on your e-commerce site without help from IT.
Top of page
3-D modeling: advanced compression for fast streaming
The pinnacle of interactivity is the 3-D model that allows customers to grab an image, rotate it, measure it and manipulate it for example, open drawers, lift lids or pull out shelves to learn more about how the product works. Now, for a few hundred dollars you can hire a specialized vendor to create a 3-D model of your product that you can insert in your Web page like any graphic image.
Vendors like Kaon Interactive in the United States and Aarkid in Scotland use compression technology and streaming capabilities to ensure that even large 3-D models to display in a matter of seconds.
Here are a few considerations about 3-D for the IT department:
" A typical Java-based 3-D model requires no more storage than a high-quality JPEG image, according to Kaon Interactive CTO Joshua Smith.
" The Web server delivers the zipped file to the browser like it would any content, so the impact on performance is negligible. If a site visitor does not have a Java-enabled browser, a still image can appear instead.
" Because a 3-D model can be deployed on any ordinary Web browser, with no additional server-side technologies, it is pretty simple to support.
" The code used to build models is search engine-friendly, and 3-D technology can automatically integrate with your shopping cart system to make the buying process easier.
" You can link the applets to your analytics engine to track visitor activity just as you would for any Web page.
Interactive tools foster a more flexible e-commerce model, one that lets your customers take greater control over their shopping experience. "If you are trying to build a relationship, you need to do more than just show them the product," Finn says. "You need to help them come to a decision about what to buy."
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Debby Young is a freelance writer based in Framingham, Massachusetts, specializing in the use of technology in business. Young has 25 years of experience writing for CIO, Electronic Business, Enterprise Leadership, CDW Biz Tech and other business publications.
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