About the RIA in e-commerce website
On Tuesday morning, I attended the richcommerce breakfeast conference. It was organized by Frédéric Cavazza and François Ziserman in the luxury Adobe office in Paris. It was very interesting because the speakers avoided the usual casual things and focused on the analysis of the international e-commerce market, in order to highlight some rich best-practices.
The eCommerce market
The beginning of the lecture listed some impressive numbers about the 2007 ecommerce results :
- 16 billions €
- 20 millions of clients
- 145 millions of dealings
- 35 % of growth
- 37 000 e-stores
- A new online store opens every hour
We can explain this strong growth by the broadband democratisation and the increasing market.
About the technical solutions ?
The quick technical point also avoided the usual questions about the compatibility between the rich technology (flash, etc.) and the business needs (ranking, web analytics, etc.).
- Shockwave is installed on a computer out of two
- JavaScript is supported on more than 90% computers
- Flash is downloaded by more than 98% of users
As we’ve been clearly told : the technique is just a means. Everything is possible in spite of money, time and skills. The “rich” layer brings a value added underlining the product (360°, 3D… = features which convert customers from traditional stores to e-commerce). It also brings a value added concerning UX (interactivity, etc.) in order to sell more (and better).
How to improve a store then?
Two philosophies have been explained last Tuesday. You can restructure the whole website using rich technologies, as it is the case for a full flash website, or for the Gucci site which is not recommanded because it costs a lot of money and it is not very efficient. Such a project can be interesting as far as the media are concerned : the whole buzz process about the lined up, but also because it enables a great user’s experience. Yet, a total change of the website is hasardous : you may lose a lot of sales. Contrary to institutional wesites, the commercial ones shouldn’t be restructured too regularly. Rich interfaces add technical constraints (loading time, latest plug-in version installation rate…)
However, it is highly recommanded to “sprinkle rich features on the website”. Indeed, it’s an easy task to optimize browsing the categories using an Ajax feature. The first step of such a project concerns the product page, to which you add rich functions to fill the lack of proximity between the product and its potential customer. It should go from a simple zooming to a 3D viewing, and to some sensorial experimentations. For instance, let’s see the Mercedes website :
On A-to-S.co.uk, you can see how the leather’s car will react under your fingers
Another good example concerns Amazon. As often, this e-commerce website is taken as example for its efficiency. Everybody knows the Amazon interface which corresponds to commercial codes that everybody understands. The difficult part is to preserve that store in order not to take any risk with the main sales and to provide a free API which enables the community to develop rich experiences (browsegood, blackdogair, etc.) over the traditional catalogue. There are two ways to reach the products for a growing target, and no business risk.
Classical Amazon.com
Amazon.com via BrowseGoods
The good practices
The lecture went on with a series of international best-practices. You have to notice that the luxury and automobile fields are particularly well represented (both quantitatively and qualitatively) especially the American ones. The ready-to-wear industry is also well represented.
Rich modules were presented, grouped in different categories :
- First person view
- The configurators
- The viewers
- The features comparators
- The advergames
- …
Study cases and opening
The lecture went on with two study cases. The Beauté Prestige International company shared its experience on the lined up of the Jean Paul Gaultier Perfume website store. They openly talked about the problems they went through (for example the choice of the latest flash player version just a few days before the official release), but they also talked about the successful points, highlighting the problems going with the luxury industry, with a rich store and with the sale of products for which the Internet is not appropriate (how to choose a perfume without smelling it?).
The second study case being quite confidential, I won’t talk about it into detail. Anyway, taking this example into account, the lecture concluded raising the question of the future of the e-commerce in 5 or 10 years. It’s more than obvious that the online sale should carry on getting its inspiration into the video game industry, a real innovator and nowadays excellent in terms of 3D, interactivity and UX. Just have a look at this screenshot from the game Test Drive Unlimited to realise how important it is for e-commerce websites to lean on video-game products.
The car configurator from Toyota Highlander
The car configurator from Test Drive Unlimited
See also
Photos crédits : LeBlogDeDenis.
Tags: ajax, e-business, ecommerce, ria, richcommerce