Community Commerce
By: Jennifer D. Meacham
Tapping into this social networking trend makes the online shopping experience more like one on land.
Until now online shopping has been a lonely endeavor. Think Sandra Bullock in "The Net," the 1995 film where she works from home, orders everything online and has few friends outside of cyberspace. Even 10 years later most people still shop online alone, sneaking it in during work hours or squeezing it in after everyone's in bed.
"If you look at the first 10 years of e-commerce, it was solitary, not social," says Rob Solomon, vice president of the Yahoo Shopping Group. "Yet, if you look at the pre-e-commerce world, that's all shopping was; e-commerce changed that. E-commerce isn't going to be a solitary thing that much longer."
That's because social networking is having its third rebirth online, and this time experts think it will stick.
"E-commerce will be much more than 5 percent [of retail revenue] three years from now," Solomon says, "because this will change the landscape of it."
As such, affiliate sites are building loyal fan bases and gaining steady click throughs by encouraging buyers to bring their offline friends along for the shopping experience.
"Consumers looking for the best of the best, the first of the first, the most relevant of the relevant increasingly don't connect to 'just any other consumer' anymore," according to TrendWatching.com, a report focused on spotting new trends. "They are hooking up with (and listening to) their taste 'twins'; fellow consumers somewhere in the world who think, react, enjoy and consume the way they do."
To tap this trend, the best-selling affiliates are adding social networking elements outside the norm. They're offering ways for buddies to view each other's potential purchases, give and get advice in any form they want, pay each other's bills and even get cash for recommending something their buddy ultimately buys.
Influencing Others' Potential Purchases
Forrester Research found that consumers who buy fashion online are more likely to interact socially by sending product links to friends. With more than 40 million - mostly young, higher-income females - having purchased clothing online to date, this market is ripe for affiliate-site options that seamlessly allow second opinions.
Take eDressMe.com, run by Tango dress designer Joanne Stoner, who uses Yahoo's storefront to offer her dresses alongside more than 1,000 others from New York designers. The site conference calls in mothers and daughters with its personal shoppers to look at online dress options together and reach an agreement.
"It's just the right forum because the daughter is around to shop, the mother is around to pay for it and the personal shopper will be the one who decides whether the outfit is appropriate or not," Stoner says. The result? eDressMe.com gets about 6 million unique visitors per month and has been No. 1 in most natural search rankings for "cocktail dresses" and "evening dresses" for three years running.
While online buddy shoppers can't actually see the other person's outfit on, they now have options like My Virtual Model, an animated model sized to a customer's exact measurements and customized with faces, hairstyles and builds. Merchants like Adidas.com, LandsEnd.com, LLBean.com, Sears.com and iVillage.com (20 percent commission) all offer the virtual model for "trying on" clothing as part of their affiliate offerings. The saved model can be used at all participating merchants, with final outfits "imailed" to buddies for feedback. Shoppers using My Virtual Model reportedly spend more, buy more and return fewer items.
Buddy emails and conference calls are just two of the many new ways shoppers will soon be able to provide prepurchase feedback through shopping sites. "There is so much more you can do with IP communications if you tailor it for the e-commerce experience," says Rob Seaver, CEO of website-embedded IP communications provider Vivox.com. "What if you could talk to people who recently purchased the same item? What if you could see into other people's shopping carts? What if you're considering a purchase of the 'Desperate Housewives' DVD collection, and while you're looking at that there's an ad that says, Join five people in a small affinity group talking about 'Desperate Housewives'? By bringing the social networking aspect and e-commerce together, you can increase interaction on a site and, consequently, increase sales."
For example, in conjunction with Friendster.com allowing users to post Amazon.com affiliate links, it now offers Net Zero.com's free computer-to-computer calling with a banner ad on its log-in page. Buddies only need a USB headset and microphone to bring the offline experience online.
Give Advice, Get Advice
Amazon.com is a leader in product reviews with more than 6 million entered by its users. And in November, Amazon patented how its reviews are conducted.
According to Amazon's lead engineers, "The click through and conversion rates of recommendations based on collaborative filtering vastly exceed those of untargeted content such as banner advertisements and top-seller lists."
Still most others claim it's a nonissue. "All the major sites have product and user reviews," says Martin Levy at eDeals.com, which posts reviews alongside merchant, auction and coupon results for product searches on one page.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 33 million American Internet users have reviewed or rated someone or something online. And Forrester Research found that, in Europe, more than 50 percent of online consumer electronics buyers check product reviews from other customers, 30 percent purchased something online based on someone else's online rating and 15 percent wrote a review themselves.
TrendWatching.com cataloged these results in its late-2005 "twinsumer" report.
"The twinsumer phenomenon is turning millions of reviews, ratings and recommendations into truly valuable results fitting one person's very particular preferences or even lifestyle - whether it's a one-off twinsumer union or an ongoing relationship. Twinsumer therefore isn't about access to reviews or ratings or even trust in general (those are fast becoming hygiene), but about relevance."
The name of online mall Yub.com says it all. It's "buy" written backward. The company, launched in February 2005 and snapped up by Buy.com, is all about consumers recommending products to other consumers. Offering nearly 5 million affiliate-fed products, Yub.com provides a place where people sign up to meet (and give Yub valuable consumer data), hang out and get merchant-negotiated cash-back rates of up to 25 percent for free members and up to 34 percent for "premium" members, paying $24.95 per year. Users also get 1 percent when their buddies buy something endorsed in their profile.
"The voice of our members is an incredible resource for both merchants and online shoppers," said Jared Morgenstern, president of Yub.com, in a launch release. "Merchants receive the benefit of satisfied customers who become product evangelists, and online shoppers learn the latest in trends from the most reliable source - their friends. Continued on Page 2...
Tags:
community, commerce, influence, spending, purchase, commerce, social networking, shopping experience, online shopping, trendwatching, solitary, solomon, 10 years later, consumers, sandra bullock, click throughs, offline friends, loyal fan, time experts, retail revenue, commerce world, somewhere in the world, affiliate sites, new trends, years from now, rebirth,
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