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Designing Cross-channel Experiences: For Ecommerce
and Multi-channel Retailers

                                               Shopping is inherently a social experience. Meeting up with
                                               friends in a mall, sipping coffee and window-shopping
                                               together, browsing through the wares in a busy shopping
                                               district, stumbling across cool, unexpected treasures—
                                               these are the moments that make “going out shopping” in
                                               the real world so much fun.

However, the traditional ecommerce experience rarely contains these interesting, sensorial experiences
of offline retail. How do you design a successful cross-experience for online and multi-channel retailers?

A typical ecommerce experience entails searching Google or Amazon for the product you want, then
going through various sites to find the cheapest deal. Savvy offline retailers provide a selection of their
goods (sometimes complete catalogs) on their own websites but the online experience does not feel as
enjoyable as the real-world experience of shopping in those same retailers’ stores. Customers have to
scroll through pages and pages of poorly organized items, work through vague product descriptions,
photos that don’t give a clear idea whether those items would fit their size, style and taste and poorly
designed check-out processes.

When customers are forced to sacrifice the fun, social and pleasurable aspects of offline shopping, they
come to expect less and less from ecommerce experiences and develop a price-oriented and deal-
hungry approach to online shopping. Retailers can capture a lot of value and customer loyalty by


© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
designing experiences that transfer the social aspects of real-world shopping to the online world. Here
are some ways in which pure-play online retailers as well as cross channel retailers can create "wow" in
the ecommerce shopping experience:

Enabling Discovery & Exclamations!

Traditional retail therapy encourages the process of discovery like no other. People find products that
get them excited, provoke reactions and conversations with friends. In an typical offline retail
environment, shoppers browse through products, hold them up against themselves, ask their shopping
companions for feedback or advice, receive “thumbs-ups”, “go-aheads”, “green-signals”, “go-for-its”,
critique each other’s choices and occasionally engage in heated discussions about the merits of one
product over another.

Retailers have tried to bring in some aspects of discovery and sharing into online ecommerce
experiences through Facebook likes, “Want” buttons, “Wishlists” however, the key is to enable people
to emote the same way they do during the physical shopping experience with features that encourage
“sharing” and “receiving” reactions, recommendations and reviews with others quickly and easily. Other
features that encourage discovery and sharing are built-in chat applications that allow shoppers to invite
their favorite shopping buddies from their networks to view, rate, comment their finds as they shop.
This brings ecommerce, currently a very isolated activity, closer to offline retail which is more social,
conversational and fun.

The fine art of behavioral targeting has been mastered by the online ad industry long ago. They
understand what people do online to infer what their interests are and use this data to serve them more
relevant ads. Similarly, ecommerce retailers can identify the right products based on people’s interests
and give those products a prominent place in the shopping experience to boost discovery and sales.

Showcase What’s Hot

Shoppers don’t like to plough through tons of products to identify the best, top-selling, most trendy etc.
In a typical store scenario, shoppers can see the “hottest selling” products up-front to drive impulse
purchases. E-commerce retailers can keep a pulse on “top trends” and “most talked about brands in
customers' "social universe” and similarly feature these “hot” items more prominently on the site,




© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
driving impulse purchases and giving products a wide exposure to new potential customers and even
casual site visitors.

Customers also enjoy items that are “selected”, “suggested”, “put together” for them. In internet
parlance, this is known as “curation”. Ecommerce sites can drive greater purchases if they can
prominently feature products that are curated for shoppers by other shoppers in “saved”, “recently
added”, “people who viewed this product also viewed” type of features. This lets users know what’s hot
among other shoppers of the same site.

For example, people are likelier to purchase something if their friends weigh in. With this in mind, EBay’s
new browser plug-in, Help Me Shop, lets users shop anywhere on the web and drag items into a
separate window. Through Facebook, the user invites friends to give advice on the items they like best.




© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
Another site, Fashiolista focuses exclusively on fashion discovery and inspiration allowing site members
to share their favorite finds with others in the community and friends from their social networks, get
style advice and tips from friends and follow people whose style inspires them.




Simplify Or Abandon The Shopping Cart Functionality

Ecommerce retailers have tried to mirror the offline shopping experience of pushing (and occasionally
dragging) a cart around and filling it up with products. However most shopping cart functionalities are
clunky and not standardized or consistent from one retailer to another, frustrating customers as they try



© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
to figure out how to use different types of shopping carts. In most cases, customers fill up cart and easily
abandon it in its entirety if there’s a slight change of mind, mood or another interruption.

According to Forrester Research, the biggest factor scaring customers away is high shipping costs. If you
can’t afford to offer free or discount shipping, the article recommends making sure “the cost is clearly
visible early and often to avoid surprises.” In addition, since shopping both online and offline is a social
experience, product discovery and spontaneity are important aspects of the experience. Enable
shoppers to immediately buy with one-click rather than fill up a cart only to abandon it later. Eliminate
this kind of a friction in the design of the online shopping experience. A great example is the iTunes and
Amazon stores which have demonstrated the benefit of a 1-click approach.




Marry Mobility With The Online Shopping Experience

Most people spend time accessing Facebook on their mobile phones. Twitter users also spend six times
more time using Twitter mobile than Twitter.com. This has major implications for the shopping
experience. The same experience offered online has to be customized and made relevant for mobile


© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
consumption. With mobile, people prefer snippets of browsing. Mobile behavior does not involve long
periods of browsing time. Ensure that mobile experiences are small-sized/bite-sized to make
spontaneous discovery and impulse purchases possible. For example, the
Threadless.comhttp://www.threadless.com/ mobile site is full of rich imagery and highlights only the
most important features that are important to customers such as community, galleries, search and
checkout.




Another example is Groupon which uses the power of mobility to allow customers to get deals and
offers when they are on the road, near a store.




© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
Ecommerce retailers can leverage social data to customize and personalize shopping experiences. It’s
important to note that this interest or taste-based clustering and targeting reaches beyond the social
graph and can be much more effective at driving sales. It also makes the shopping experience less of a
chore and more fun, since only the products and brands that customers really like are presented to
them.




© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com
About CXP Design

CXP Design (www.cxpdesign.com), founded by Rupa Shankar, is a platform for marketers,
technologists, designers and leaders to discuss and gain a deeper understanding of cross-channel
customer experience design, develop empathy for customer needs and learn how to create
products and services that deliver "wow" experiences for customers.

When we check into a hotel. When we shop on-line. When we buy a pair of shoes. When we get on
a flight. These are experiences by which we measure brands every day. However, most companies
are without the tools to purposefully design those experiences for maximum value. That’s where
CXP Design comes in.

Day in, day out, we live, sleep, eat, breathe and unravel the riddle that is human experience, leading
to more loyal and committed customers for our clients.

www.cxpdesign.com
www.facebook.com/cxpdesign
www.twitter.com/cxpdesign
http://in.linkedin.com/groups/CXP-Design-Creating-Customer-Wow-4726523




Rupa is an Associate Director at Happiest Minds Technologies (www.happiestminds.com), a next-
generation IT Services & Solutions company at the forefront of Providing Advisory, Implementation and
Managed Services on Social computing, Mobility, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud computing,
Security and Unified Communications. At Happiest Minds, Rupa is responsible for uncovering and
activating innovative digital and social engagement strategies for its clients, spearheading the
development of frameworks and solutions for different industry verticals and enhancing the global go-to-
market strategy. She taps into her past work as both a design practitioner and marketer to help Happiest
Minds clients envision and define broad, end-to-end customer experiences.




© Rupa Shankar
www.cxpdesign.com

Más contenido relacionado

Designing cross channel experiences -for ecommerce and multi-channel retailers

  • 1. Designing Cross-channel Experiences: For Ecommerce and Multi-channel Retailers Shopping is inherently a social experience. Meeting up with friends in a mall, sipping coffee and window-shopping together, browsing through the wares in a busy shopping district, stumbling across cool, unexpected treasures— these are the moments that make “going out shopping” in the real world so much fun. However, the traditional ecommerce experience rarely contains these interesting, sensorial experiences of offline retail. How do you design a successful cross-experience for online and multi-channel retailers? A typical ecommerce experience entails searching Google or Amazon for the product you want, then going through various sites to find the cheapest deal. Savvy offline retailers provide a selection of their goods (sometimes complete catalogs) on their own websites but the online experience does not feel as enjoyable as the real-world experience of shopping in those same retailers’ stores. Customers have to scroll through pages and pages of poorly organized items, work through vague product descriptions, photos that don’t give a clear idea whether those items would fit their size, style and taste and poorly designed check-out processes. When customers are forced to sacrifice the fun, social and pleasurable aspects of offline shopping, they come to expect less and less from ecommerce experiences and develop a price-oriented and deal- hungry approach to online shopping. Retailers can capture a lot of value and customer loyalty by © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 2. designing experiences that transfer the social aspects of real-world shopping to the online world. Here are some ways in which pure-play online retailers as well as cross channel retailers can create "wow" in the ecommerce shopping experience: Enabling Discovery & Exclamations! Traditional retail therapy encourages the process of discovery like no other. People find products that get them excited, provoke reactions and conversations with friends. In an typical offline retail environment, shoppers browse through products, hold them up against themselves, ask their shopping companions for feedback or advice, receive “thumbs-ups”, “go-aheads”, “green-signals”, “go-for-its”, critique each other’s choices and occasionally engage in heated discussions about the merits of one product over another. Retailers have tried to bring in some aspects of discovery and sharing into online ecommerce experiences through Facebook likes, “Want” buttons, “Wishlists” however, the key is to enable people to emote the same way they do during the physical shopping experience with features that encourage “sharing” and “receiving” reactions, recommendations and reviews with others quickly and easily. Other features that encourage discovery and sharing are built-in chat applications that allow shoppers to invite their favorite shopping buddies from their networks to view, rate, comment their finds as they shop. This brings ecommerce, currently a very isolated activity, closer to offline retail which is more social, conversational and fun. The fine art of behavioral targeting has been mastered by the online ad industry long ago. They understand what people do online to infer what their interests are and use this data to serve them more relevant ads. Similarly, ecommerce retailers can identify the right products based on people’s interests and give those products a prominent place in the shopping experience to boost discovery and sales. Showcase What’s Hot Shoppers don’t like to plough through tons of products to identify the best, top-selling, most trendy etc. In a typical store scenario, shoppers can see the “hottest selling” products up-front to drive impulse purchases. E-commerce retailers can keep a pulse on “top trends” and “most talked about brands in customers' "social universe” and similarly feature these “hot” items more prominently on the site, © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 3. driving impulse purchases and giving products a wide exposure to new potential customers and even casual site visitors. Customers also enjoy items that are “selected”, “suggested”, “put together” for them. In internet parlance, this is known as “curation”. Ecommerce sites can drive greater purchases if they can prominently feature products that are curated for shoppers by other shoppers in “saved”, “recently added”, “people who viewed this product also viewed” type of features. This lets users know what’s hot among other shoppers of the same site. For example, people are likelier to purchase something if their friends weigh in. With this in mind, EBay’s new browser plug-in, Help Me Shop, lets users shop anywhere on the web and drag items into a separate window. Through Facebook, the user invites friends to give advice on the items they like best. © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 4. Another site, Fashiolista focuses exclusively on fashion discovery and inspiration allowing site members to share their favorite finds with others in the community and friends from their social networks, get style advice and tips from friends and follow people whose style inspires them. Simplify Or Abandon The Shopping Cart Functionality Ecommerce retailers have tried to mirror the offline shopping experience of pushing (and occasionally dragging) a cart around and filling it up with products. However most shopping cart functionalities are clunky and not standardized or consistent from one retailer to another, frustrating customers as they try © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 5. to figure out how to use different types of shopping carts. In most cases, customers fill up cart and easily abandon it in its entirety if there’s a slight change of mind, mood or another interruption. According to Forrester Research, the biggest factor scaring customers away is high shipping costs. If you can’t afford to offer free or discount shipping, the article recommends making sure “the cost is clearly visible early and often to avoid surprises.” In addition, since shopping both online and offline is a social experience, product discovery and spontaneity are important aspects of the experience. Enable shoppers to immediately buy with one-click rather than fill up a cart only to abandon it later. Eliminate this kind of a friction in the design of the online shopping experience. A great example is the iTunes and Amazon stores which have demonstrated the benefit of a 1-click approach. Marry Mobility With The Online Shopping Experience Most people spend time accessing Facebook on their mobile phones. Twitter users also spend six times more time using Twitter mobile than Twitter.com. This has major implications for the shopping experience. The same experience offered online has to be customized and made relevant for mobile © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 6. consumption. With mobile, people prefer snippets of browsing. Mobile behavior does not involve long periods of browsing time. Ensure that mobile experiences are small-sized/bite-sized to make spontaneous discovery and impulse purchases possible. For example, the Threadless.comhttp://www.threadless.com/ mobile site is full of rich imagery and highlights only the most important features that are important to customers such as community, galleries, search and checkout. Another example is Groupon which uses the power of mobility to allow customers to get deals and offers when they are on the road, near a store. © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 7. Ecommerce retailers can leverage social data to customize and personalize shopping experiences. It’s important to note that this interest or taste-based clustering and targeting reaches beyond the social graph and can be much more effective at driving sales. It also makes the shopping experience less of a chore and more fun, since only the products and brands that customers really like are presented to them. © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com
  • 8. About CXP Design CXP Design (www.cxpdesign.com), founded by Rupa Shankar, is a platform for marketers, technologists, designers and leaders to discuss and gain a deeper understanding of cross-channel customer experience design, develop empathy for customer needs and learn how to create products and services that deliver "wow" experiences for customers. When we check into a hotel. When we shop on-line. When we buy a pair of shoes. When we get on a flight. These are experiences by which we measure brands every day. However, most companies are without the tools to purposefully design those experiences for maximum value. That’s where CXP Design comes in. Day in, day out, we live, sleep, eat, breathe and unravel the riddle that is human experience, leading to more loyal and committed customers for our clients. www.cxpdesign.com www.facebook.com/cxpdesign www.twitter.com/cxpdesign http://in.linkedin.com/groups/CXP-Design-Creating-Customer-Wow-4726523 Rupa is an Associate Director at Happiest Minds Technologies (www.happiestminds.com), a next- generation IT Services & Solutions company at the forefront of Providing Advisory, Implementation and Managed Services on Social computing, Mobility, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud computing, Security and Unified Communications. At Happiest Minds, Rupa is responsible for uncovering and activating innovative digital and social engagement strategies for its clients, spearheading the development of frameworks and solutions for different industry verticals and enhancing the global go-to- market strategy. She taps into her past work as both a design practitioner and marketer to help Happiest Minds clients envision and define broad, end-to-end customer experiences. © Rupa Shankar www.cxpdesign.com