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Alice in a Wondrous Land.

June 8, 2010 in Digital Marketing | 0 Comments

Alice is the coolest internet app around.  It’s a website that allows consumers to buy directly from the manufacturer…with a promise of low, low prices because the products aren’t inflated by retail shelf stocking fees and other costs associated with driving traffic to retail.  

They promise one box, though how that can be with purchases coming straight from the manufacturer is beyond me.  Alice also offers free shipping, a product planner allowing users to restock based on past purchase dates, and a drag-and-drop interface even a caveman would love. 

Though I haven’t done the deep dive on Alice, it is the future. It won’t cover fresh produce but that’s not too far down the road, no doubt available from a web start-up run by a smart farm consortium. Alice is taking baby steps which is the way to go. (I was in a meeting with a major packaged goods company and all of its agencies last week and only a handful had even heard of Alice.)  This is how we  – especially the next gen — will shop for staples.  Alice reminds me of a post I wrote a couple of years ago suggesting that the size of home mail boxes will grow significantly as web commerce develops.  Alice may not be the Amazon of its time, but if it gets the usability and customer delivery right it will be the template for the world’s biggest app. Peace!

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How Stuff Works Online.

May 24, 2010 in Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy | 0 Comments

Here’s how retail works.  You build, lease or buy a store, fill it with stuff, promote it and people come and buy its wares.  Or they don’t.

Here’s how TV works.  You build, lease or buy a program, fill it with entertaining or informational stuff, promote it and people come. Or they don’t.

Here’s how the web works. You build, lease or buy a site, fill it with stuff, promote it and people come and buy its wares…if you happen to be selling anything.  Sometimes the web is used to help people decide if they want to buy your stuff, because it’s sold elsewhere.  And other times the web is about entertaining visitors encouraging them to come back so ad revenue allows the site owner to buy stuff.  And sometimes still, a website is created to just simply to impart knowledge, altruism and community. 

That’s the thing about the web — visitors don’t always know if they are on a site to be sold, entertained or informed. Sometimes the builders of websites don’t seem to know either.  And when that happens the sites tend to provide a little bit of each.  And a little bit of each often leads to a lot of none. Fruit cocktail. Tricky stuff.  Focus is your friend.

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Bracketing Retail Purchases

December 21, 2009 in Marketing | 0 Comments

I was shopping with the wifus this weekend and she bought our son two pairs of basketball sneakers for Christmas (He’s not a reader, so don’t worry about the surprise).  She bought him a size 10.5 and an 11. In commercial photography this process is called bracketing; meaning getting two different exposures just to make sure you get the right one.  In retail this bracketing is, apparently, pretty common too.  After the actual gifting, the size (color?) that doesn’t fit is returned.

Doesn’t this reduce selection for the other shoppers, I wondered out loud.  She said everybody does it.  Were I in the retail business I’d frown upon this big time. It encourages returns, reduces the stock availability, and makes lines longer; especially during the holiday. To me this practice seems like a real revenue suck.

Wifus, who may be one of the world’s best, most thoughtful shoppers, disagrees.  “When I come back to return, I’m likely to buy something else.”  Upon prompt she said she probably bought something incremental half the time.  I’m not sold.  Were I a retailer, I’d still stop bracketing immediamente! And I bet it would bottom line positive. You thought? Peace!

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