The Official Fluid Blog

Yesterday Fluid announced Fluid Lite, which we believe is a significant step forward in the capabilities small and mid-sized ecommerce retailers are able to offer on their site. In short, this release means retailers that cannot afford or do not need the full interactive shopping capabilities of Fluid Experience can offer simple zoom, rotation/multiple views and color change on their site at an appropriate price point.

Initially we have launched Fluid Lite for the Yahoo! Stores platform through our partner Fast Pivot (www.fastpivotsoftware.com). For $200/month users can add the same rich zoom functionality that has been proven to increase conversion by 15-50%. Better, this is offered from a self-service site with virtually no need for implementation services (though the folks at Fast Pivot will do a great job helping you out, if you’d like). Even better, the integration with the Yahoo product catalog is built in, so you don’t have to do redundant data entry in Fluid Lite. There is almost no additional work.

The results from the first customer, Automoblox, have been tremendous. They have moved from a site with small, static images to utilize large, interactive images that really showcase their unique product. And ultimately, shopping is about engaging people with your products. We’ll share increase in conversion data with you once we’ve had enough traffic.

One of the most important aspects of the Fluid Lite offering is the deep integration with the ecommerce platform users get out of the box. The Yahoo Stores integration can automatically import product data so you don’t have any manual work. As we complete other integrations, Fluid will be working with partners to roll out Fluid Lite self-service solutions for other SMB ecommerce platforms, including Netsuite Commerce, Amazon Webstores and others. For customers that are already using those platforms we are able to help you now – it is simply the self-service piece and default integration we are working to put in place.

While we think Fluid Lite is an exciting alternative to overpriced imaging solutions on the market today, Fluid still offers Fluid Experience for customers that want to use interactive technology to increase conversion broadly across their site, from site arrival to conversion. Beyond the basic zoom and swatching solutions, Fluid Experience offers video, recently viewed items, suggestive selling and shoppable lifestyle photography.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 am and is filed under E-Commerce, Online Retail / Interactive Merchandising, Rich Internet Applications, User Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.