web marketing expert and co-founder of a web enthusiast network named inreallife, henriette, asked for a top 5 or 10 of the future of ecommerce in the group’s forum. before i knew it i had written 2 full pages with what i’ve actually concluded through many of the posts on this blog, and so felt it belonged here:
the future of ecommerce is social. no doubt in my mind. 300 million facebook profiles can not be mistaken; ”social” has become mainstream (and i attended a conference on the topic last week where jupiter research, google and others fully confirmed it: the future is now, and we, as consumers and customers, not corporations, own it!).
transparency and fairness. i can’t say it better than peter friis, danish google ceo (along these lines ayway): ”there are more clever people outside of your company than inside it… so if you fuck up, i have a personal reach of half a million people i can tell it to… on linkedin alone”. people trust peers more so than companies, and with 200 million blogs around + all the social channels, giving room for peer reviews have become a necessity. according to this one-year-old nielsen survey, 78% trust peer recommendations more than anything else. this, i believe, will fire up fairtrade, as transparency is and increasingly will be a must.
behavior based recommendations. algorithms that cleverly analyze profile info, buying- and browsing patterns are and increasingly will be a very important parameter for competitiveness. i only want one cd with jenny wilson, so stop bothering me until you have something new that have been qualified by cool ‘people like me’. which leads me to the next point.
loyalty programs/ 1:1-marketing. unfortunately, sending flowers in denmark is one of the few areas that still suffer from monopoly (soo last century!), forcing me to be loyal to interflora.dk (my granny makes it all worth it). every transaction is the same, nothing is kept on file. and i receive the same customer satisfaction survey every time i shop there. i have suggested a loyalty concept to interflora 10 times. i have suggested that they keep me on file and for example offer free shipping for every 10 or 20 transactions. i have never gotten a response. other web florists, such as american Proflowers.com are so much better at making 1:1 marketing. i was recently prompted to remember a birthday with words along the lines of: ”welcome back”, and ”your friend william has his birthday coming up”. of course i know that proflowers care as little about me as interflora does… but as a consumer, i appreciate that proflowers care about my data. in the future (which is now), consumers will not remunerate businesses who can’t handle customer data for 1:1 (and permission-based ONLY for crying out loud) marketing.
diy + miy/ personalization. DIY (do-it-yourself) & MIY (make it yourself)… already a big hit. people want their individual version of everything. shirtcity.com (imentioned before), where you can design the prints of tees, mugs and whatnots is a good example. some vendors on etsy and dawanda allow you to pick your own fabrics and colors. apple offers a free laser engraving on all new ipod models, and denmark’s own tuborg beer (part of carlsberg) facilitates the making of your own beer labels. i think such sweet little services may be a requirement from future prosumers. i might even buy a car bike online, if it came with a personalized paint job.
community dynamics. the intriguing trades of the most usable communities will be applied to market places. user stats, aliveness indicators (learned that word at the first inreallife meeting), neighbours, and snooping into your peers’ transactions will be huge… snoopin’ ’round seems to appeal to us…
niche portals. i am also certain that peer-to-peer market places (lacking a more precise term) have a great future. i’ve written about the success of american etsy before, and about german dawanda – both are handicraft market places where you can buy and sell anything handmade. i’ve also mentioned american foodzie.com that sells organic tit bits from artisan producers. the buy/ sell-concept within product categories will be big.
give back. in the corporate world, giving back is known as csr (corporate social responsibility) and is heavily talked about. my favorite transaction based site kiva.org, loans that change lives, beautifully demonstrates that people really want to make a difference. at kiva, you not only have a lender profile and portfolio, but you also have stats for how your recommendations influenced others, and thereby give you ”credit” for the joint impact. i think donations and initiatives like agoodcause.com will develop and become more transparent.
i want to practice and combine all of this and have a great future… which leads me to one last point… our one cool web has unlimited space (i will leave others to debate storage), and so there is plenty of room for all of us…tags:1:1, business concept, community, consumption, crowdwisdom, irl, webshop
Stumble It!
This entry was posted
on Sunday, September 28th, 2008 at 12:35 am and is filed under Ecommerce.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.