I was unable to attend the Shop.org Annual Summit last month, unfortunately, which is probably the best 3-days you can spend away from the office in this industry (while not on vacation). So, while I was in the process of cleaning out my ridiculously bloated inbox at work yesterday, I came across a few archived e-mails from colleagues, vendors and the press that contained notes and summaries of the presentations and workshops. One of the workshops was on the subject of what the presenter was calling E-Commerce 3.0, and how we are apparently at the dawn of a new era in E-Commerce right now. Damn it...here I am just starting to figure out this whole Web 2.0 thing, and now they've decided to upgrade the Internet!
In all seriousness, there seems to be a growing trend emerging in the E-Commerce industry that I believe to be fundamentally flawed; the practice of throwing what some would call "Web 2.0" applications at a site, in such a way that it completely breaks the existing online shopping metaphor that the consumer has been trained to use. In the past few months, I've seen sites totally redesigned in Flash, and Ajax being completely over-used, and in some cases it seems only for the sake of using it.
For the record, I am a huge proponent of the applications of tools and techniques such as Ajax and Flex in an E-Commerce site, but not at the expense of the basic fundamentals of usability. Their use is probably most common in applications such as single-screen checkout, which is an obvious place to try and improve upon the existing process, and recoup some the user abandonment that naturally occurs during checkout. Another great example is at Gap.com, where the consumer has the option of using their QuickLook feature to add something to their shopping cart without clicking through to a product detail page. It took me a while to warm up to this concept after it was launched last year, but it ultimately seems very intuitive and not overly intrusive to the customer's browsing behavior. It's probably something that frequent shoppers of the Gap will gravitate to, which should ultimately lead to an increase in conversion and AOV for repeat visitors.
I think there are also multiple examples of smaller, less-mainstream shopping sites that were built from the ground-up using Ruby on Rails, which simply blow me away. But ,that is a subject for a future post...
Obviously, the overall business of selling online has matured to the point where all of the low-hanging-fruit has been plucked, and we all have to work a little bit harder these days to not only win new customers, but keep the ones that we already have. Unfortunately, this seems to be causing a reaction in our business where we spend more time trying to chase the next hot thing, instead of listening to our customers and sticking to the fundamentals.
Like it or not, the basic framework for a successful E-Commerce site hasn't changed in several years, and for a good reason: It's simply not broke. I'm of the opinion that this notion of E-Commerce 3.0 seems like too much grasping at straws, and could ultimately create too much confusion in the marketplace.
I am horrible at attributing quotes to the right people, but there's one that comes to mind which bears repeating:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
