Before the internet, the following scenario could not have existed, and an online business of affiliate dollars and music sales like this was not possible. I still find the ease and convenience fascinating.

1.) While watching the Vikings vs. Packers NFL game this evening, a commercial for HTC’s new “You” campaign came on.

2.) Feeling so connected to it, I tweeted about it while on the couch with my laptop.

3.) Prior to tweeting about it, I had to find the video on YouTube to link to it in the tweet. I found it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-QhxjJFl7E

4.) In the YouTube comments, I saw the name of the artist that created the song used in the commercial. (It should be noted that I wasn’t really looking to buy this song initially.)

5.) I copied & pasted the artist & song name into Google (search results here).

6.) Found the song on Last.fm. Was able to play it directly on Last.fm to verify that it was the correct song. It was.

7.) Clicked the “buy” button on Last.fm. That brought me to Amazon.com for a 1-click purchase.

$0.99 later and after couple minutes of my time, I now have the song.

The above scenario will only get easier.

The above scenario will only get easier and faster with fewer steps to the point of purchase. Convenience is key. If your industry or market hasn’t been impacted by this, it will be. There may be technical limitations or generational preferences, but either way, both will catch up, align, and make buying your product as easy as it was for me to buy this song (even for someone not necessarily in the market).

Related posts

• No related posts.

In my ongoing effort to keep the definition of “What is E-Business” up-to-date, I have expanded on the topic of the E-Commerce pillar to E-Business specifically addressing Channel Strategy. Here’s the excerpt:

A component of any E-Commerce strategy impacting end-buyers will ultimately need to incorporate channel strategy, too. Managing channel conflict, especially for manufacturers selling direct to consumers, is a critical component to your E-Commerce strategy. Pricing, promotions, product offerings, how you communicate where and how to buy your products — these all play into your E-Commerce Channel strategy.

I keep a running and constantly-updated definition of E-Business outlined here: http://www.ebusinessblog.org/what-is-ebusiness/ .

Related posts

• When manufacturers sell direct and “compete” with retailers (3)
• Top spots in search equate to branding (0)
• SES NY – Getting Your Site Found (0)
• Mobile internet access further blurring lines between channel-specific pricing (0)
• Levolor.com out of beta (1)

The following excerpt from ReadWriteWeb shows a fantastic trend happening in retail environments today whereby consumers have instant access to pricing information on products via their mobile phone:

Stores Clueless About Mobile Barcode Scanning Applications?

With the rise of app-laden smartphones like the iPhone and Google’s Android OS, now on T-Mobile’s G1, many penny-pinching shoppers have downloaded barcode scanning applications onto their mobile devices. These apps allow consumers to compare the prices of merchandise on a store’s shelf to competing stores in the area just by taking pictures with their smartphone’s camera. The prices are instantly retrieved and displayed on the mobile phone so consumers can know before they buy if they’re getting a good deal.

via Stores Clueless About Mobile Barcode Scanning Applications? – ReadWriteWeb .

Mobile barcode scanning is like PriceGrabber; it puts the focus on service  and reasonable pricing from retailers, not only lowest possible price

The reason why I like mobile barcode scanning is because, as a consumer, this will put pressure on retailers to be competitively priced and (more importantly) focused on servicing the customer. If it mobile barcode scanning grows widespread, this will ultimately force retail channels to align with pricing in online channels.

Essentially, mobile barcode scanning acts as your own personal PriceGrabber.com. With PriceGrabber, you enter a product name and see competitive retailers, retailer rankings, and pricing:

With phones like the iPhones which blur the lines between internet device and mobile phone and have a built-in camera, barcode scanning becomes easy — snap a photo of the barcode, an iPhone application reads it, and then performs a web search for competitive pricing and availability much like PriceGrabber.

It’s difficult to find significant price savings across products and retailers on PriceGrabber — because the playing field has been leveled for retailers in the price game and forces them to focus on service. Price your products too high, and the masses will not buy from you. Price them low enough, well, you had better be able to support the service on the small profit margins you’ll be making.

If barcode scanning doesn’t enforce better service, then it will demand unique product assortments from suppliers at the retail level

A world where retailers all sell identical product assortments for virtually the same price is going to force retailers to differentiate in other ways. Sometimes this means the retailer will go private label with certain products. Or, retailers will demand a unique product selection from their supplier within a product category. Other times, retailers will negotiate exclusivity on products for a period of time. Larger retailers will do all three to be well diversified.

This burden/strain will ultimately land on the manufacturer’s/supplier’s shoulders; Brand names will win in this environment

Bar code scanning and the PriceGrabber’s of the world put added burden/strain on manufacturers/suppliers. The manufacturers will be forced to be creative in their go-to-market strategies as they launch new products across various retailers and channels. Well-recognized brands won’t fall victim (as much) to the bundling requirements, product assortment strategies, and channel-specific pricing.

Apple, for example, is represented identically across channels — with pricing being within single digits of each other between retailers. A barcode scan on an iPhone will show similar pricing across all channels of business and all retailers — thereby putting the emphasis back on the retailer to provide good service and support.

Consumers will win this battle

As much as retailers want to control the environment, at the end of the day, pricing shopping is what people will do, whether or not barcode scanning is banned. Ultimately, consumers will win this battle, and that’s a good thing.

Related posts

• When manufacturers sell direct and “compete” with retailers (3)
• What is E-Business? (Updated) (0)
• Top spots in search equate to branding (0)
• SES NY – Getting Your Site Found (0)
• Please, just manage my expectations, that’s all I ask. (0)

I was recently interviewed for a series of articles published both online and in print for Internet Retailer. I always find it interesting to see which quotes are chosen by the writer and how comments are represented when an article is finally published. The two articles in which my comments were featured were:

Laying the Groundwork

Rich media wows shoppers, boosts sales and builds brands—if e-retailers build it right.

Consumer insights refine early version of Levolor.com product configurator

This article is specific to our site in which more of my comments about launching a product configurator were used from the original interview below.

Original Interview

The article was published as a result of the effort of Adobe Scene7’s PR firm which is why you’ll see a few of the questions below specific to Adobe’s Scene7 product which we use for the interactive imagery in our product configurator.

In the spirit of full disclosure, and because I think the information in the answers below provides good background for companies considering product configurators, here is the full Q&A from the interview with additional links:

Q: When was the site launched? How long has the product configurator been on the site?

The product configurator was launched in June 2007.

Q: Please describe the product configuration capacity on your site and the underlying technology that powers it.

The product configurator is designed specifically for window treatments and supports 100s of billions of product combinations that are unique to the window covering industry. Technology used:  PHP for the application layer, MySQL for the database layer, and Ajax for much of the real-time calls to the server throughout the configuration process. Scene7’s dynamic imaging component is used to visualize window treatments as they are built throughout the configuration process.

Q: Why is rich media and this tool in particular important to selling at Levolor.com? What does this interactive capacity add to the proposition that text and static images can’t accomplish?

Since we deal with a home décor product, the ability to visualize the custom-order product prior to ordering is important to our customers. The interactive capability allows for the many billions of combinations of our product to be visualized on-the-fly without having to individually create the accompanying static images. Scene7’s dynamic imaging technology enables us to dynamically call the visual components of a configured product.

Q: In choosing across the standard and custom options – and the different product categories (blinds, drapes, etc.) – how many combinations are possible? If that number isn’t available, how many options are there to choose from?

There are over 100 billion combinations for ordering our custom blinds and shades. This doesn’t mean there are 100 billion questions to answer in a single configuration, but rather the combination of product options, colors, and sizes equate to over 100 billion different ways our products can be ordered. For a consumer, custom blinds and shades are an investment in their home and the ability to see a visual representation of the product before it is ordered adds peace of mind.

Q: What were the challenges associated with getting this many images up online? How did you resolve the challenges?

The need for dynamic imaging was obvious. There was no way it was financially feasible to maintain billions of image combinations. By leveraging Scene7’s dynamic imaging technology, we were able to resolve this product data challenge.

Q: What are the challenges associated with making sure this many images are served in a timely way in response to site visitor requests?  Could you have handled this on your own servers, do you use a content delivery network, or is this something Scene7 provides?

Scene7 provides the necessary capacity and delivery requirements to meet the needs of our end-users. Scene7’s technology was more of a foregone conclusion than it was for us to try and solve the “challenges associated with making sure this many images are served in a timely way in response to site visitor requests.”

Q: As you prepared to implement the product configurator, was there anything you learned in the process that caused you to adjust your initial plans in any way?  How did you resolve that?

Assembling a team of product experts, web development experts, interactive experts, and usability experts proved to be the most challenging. Each functional expert approaches a product configurator from their own point of view and it made identifying the ideal user interface for our end-users a very time-intensive initiative. Having the ability to deliver dynamic imaging is only a fraction of the equation to a successful configurator. For Levolor, the product configurator is an ongoing product which is updated and improved on a daily basis based on changing consumer insights, trends, and technological enhancements.

Q: What advice would you have for other online retailers considering adding this much rich media to their site, from an operational perspective? Is there any different way you would approach this, based on what you learned from you initial experience?

A product configurator is an ongoing commitment and should be treated as a part of your organization’s product offering. It’s easy to launch a functionally-sound configurator online but very difficult to achieve consistently positive customer satisfaction without continuous improvement; particularly if your configurable products change on a yearly basis. All too often we see organizations invest in a product configurator but neglect to plan post-launch improvements. The end result is a product configurator plagued by costly & massive one-time updates because the budgets align with advertising & promotion rather than research & development. A&P budgets fluctuate considerably and having the budget significantly reduced one year (due to economic conditions or otherwise) can single-handedly cripple your product configurator’s effectiveness on your website.  With interactive technology changing as quickly as it does, it’s important to stay on top of interactive and usability trends so you can stay ahead of the curve when it comes to customers interacting with your product configurator.

Q: What does it cost you to have the product configurator up on your site?  Has the return been worth it?

No comment.

Related posts

• Usability Challenge: When your products can be made in over 100 billion combinations (0)
• Levolor.com out of beta (1)
• Levolor.com gets Internet Retailer’s nod in annual “Hot 100″ list (0)
• Levolor.com E-commerce Press Release (0)
• Levolor Beta Updates (0)

In the world of consumable products, Procter & Gamble is often held at the pinnacle of marketing perfection. P&G is home to many brand names all of us are familiar with, either because we specifically seek them out on retailer shelves, or because it’s simply second nature to nab these items while at the store. From Folgers coffee, to Tide laundry detergent, to Duracell batteries, the list of brand names is rooted with highly recognizable names and long-standing tenures in the marketplace.

Retailers depend on brand name products to sell “private label” products

Retailers rely on brand names in the P&G portfolio as well as many other manufacturers to bring in the foot traffic to their stores. So as to not be dependent on one manufacturer’s brand within a product category, retailers often will sell competing brands or go at the product manufacturing/sourcing process themselves by “private labeling” their own version of the product.

We’ve all seen it at Target: the orange box of Pledge-brand furniture hand wipes on the shelf and conveniently positioned on the shelf below Pledge products, a similarly orange-colored “Target” brand furniture wipe for a moderately cheaper price. To the brand-agnostic consumer, this is a “win” for Target. To the brand-aware, the private label option appears to be cheap, or a “knock-off.”

Regardless, the brand names pulling traffic into stores allow retailers to enter into the “private label” business in the first place. The margins are healthier for private label products and enable the retailer to not be entirely dependent on one supplier/manufacturer. Excellent business strategy all around and certainly a trend with no end in site, particularly as low-cost-countries become more and more accessible to retail buying offices.

Manufacturers selling direct-to-consumer becoming more common

Like retailers depend on brand names for private label products to be successful, manufacturers depend on retailers for product sales. However, like the “private label” model outlined above, Manufacturers are turning the model around in their favor as well — by selling direct-to-consumer and bypassing the retailer altogether.

As a manufacturer, we began selling direct in June 2007. Our intention has always been to do this as a means for learning about the consumer shopping experience online. In the nearly 15 months since beginning our e-commerce initiative, the amount of data collected has been invaluable. The initiative wasn’t initially met with entirely positive feedback from our retail partners, however. Other Newell Rubbermaid brands (Levolor is a division of Newell Rubbermaid) are also selling direct: Graco Baby, Rubbermaid, and Dymo to name a few. 

P&G ventures into selling direct-to-consumers online … and Wal-Mart hires an executive to analyze the impact

In an article posted on FT.com, it opens with the following:

Procter & Gamble is testing its ability to use the internet to sell its toothpaste, household cleaners and nappies directly to US households, in a potential long-term strategic challenge to its retail partners.

The company is supporting a website, theEssentials.com, that is exclusively selling its brands, with items such as single tubes of Crest toothpaste and bottles of Mr Clean cleaning fluid, to boxes of its Pampers and Luvs brand nappies and Gillette razors.

When the leading consumable product manufacturer ventures into the world of selling direct-to-consumer, retailers’ ears perk up. While nobody can be sure of the long-term intentions of theEssentials.com, it’s obvious that a new chapter in Manufacturer+Retailer relationships is being written.

Quite often, manufacturers’ website traffic pales in comparison to retailers’ website traffic

Traffic to the P&G theEseentials.com site is minimal (27K unique visitors per month at the time of this post according to Quantcast). Clearly a non-threat to all of the major retailers who boast 10s of millions of unique visitors per month.

Retailer is to private label as manufacturer is to selling direct-to-consumer

In the short-term, P&G’s efforts will probably amount to several very uncomfortable conversations between the sales office of the manufacturer and the retailer. Phrases from the retailer will sound like, “You’re competing with us.” In the long-term, consumers will ultimately benefit from Manufacturer-driven ventures like these.

It creates a level of healthy competition between the retailer and manufacturer pushing both camps into a better understanding of the consumer’s desires and shopping behaviors — very much like private label opportunities for retailers force manufacturers to be honest with pricing and innovative with new product offerings.

Related posts

• What is E-Business? (Updated) (0)
• Top spots in search equate to branding (0)
• SES NY – Getting Your Site Found (0)
• Mobile internet access further blurring lines between channel-specific pricing (0)
• Levolor.com out of beta (1)