Nick Parish believes digital technologies can plug the gaps in the experiential side of commerce… even the ones caused by technology in the first place.
Parish, the North American editor of Contagious and a presenter at Thursday’s Digital Innovation Day, outlined what he saw as shortcomings in modern commerce – both online and in brick-and-mortar retailers.
“There are lots of ways for consumers to get sidetracked on the way to the checkout,” he said, whether it’s a poor in-store experience, arcane online checkout forms or even long page-loading times. “Most consumers will wait for an average of two seconds for a page to load. After three seconds of delay, 40% of online shoppers will exit a website completely.”
To provide solutions, Parish showcased a few projects that used technology to improve these experiences. First up: dealing with the drastic increase in smartphone use for price comparison.
Increasing numbers of consumers are likely to enter a store with phone in hand, ready to scan bar codes to compare the prices on the shelf with those at competing stores. Some retailers, such as Best Buy, responded by removing bar codes from the retail space.
One retailer’s problem, however, was another’s opportunity. Amazon.com responded by rebating those looking for a deal. If a mobile-equipped shopper scanned a bar code from the sales floor and Amazon sold the same product, it would offer a $5 discount.
“But this is a race to the bottom,” said Parish. “This is creating an experience when we’re going from ‘shopping’ to ‘transacting.’ When you’re transacting in a retail environment specifically built to provide sights, sounds and pleasures – a full experience – then you’re heading for a fall.” A retailer’s well-designed in-store atmosphere is ignored when shoppers have their heads pointed down at their phones.
Technology, then, must help enhance that in-store experience. If consumers are walking in with their eyes on their phones, utilize that behaviour, said Parish. To show how, he pointed to Star Hub, a clothing retailer in Asia that placed radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on all its products.
When customers took them to the change room, an RFID reader would identify what styles the consumer was trying on and play music to match. An SMS message was then sent to the consumer’s phone offering a download of the song being played.
“Change rooms are a totally neglected part of the retail experience,” he said. “You get naked in a completely different place you usually get naked. It’s cold, dark sometimes and a little bit weird. Brands haven’t done much to adjust that… Star Hub built an experience around their change rooms… They built a music store.”
The mobile messages had a click-through rate of more than 80%. More than 47,000 songs were downloaded.
