The Official Fluid Blog

Follow Andrew Sirotnik at twitter.com/asirotnik

The universe is chock-full of awesome things coming last. Like retirement, dessert, fat ladies singing and nice guys.

“Last” is definitely the new “first” and our panel at Shop.org, Social Commerce: 7 Strategies That Work is the last-est! Wednesday 3:30-4:30 in the “Customer Experience” track is where all the savvy show-goers will be for the perfect end to Shop.org.

Top 3 reasons you should come…

1. The real deal. We’re going to skip the hype, dive into the details of actual initiatives and get our panel’s point-of-view on social’s real role in digital retail.
2. All-star panel. The top minds from Sears, Jones Apparel Group and Diapers.com/Soap.com will tell us how they’ve used social media to move the needle on their businesses.
3. Happy hour. Yes. Unless the teamsters shut us down

Ron Offir, President of eCommerce at Jones Apparel Group, Josh Himwich, VP eCommerce Solutions at Quidsi (Diapers.com/Soap.com), and Ryan Ostrom, Director of Multi-Channel Brands for Sears, will be sharing the inside details of their social initiatives, sneak peeks at new ideas in the works, and data on what worked and what didn’t.

Topics they will cover…

• Creating the “Everywhere Experience”
• Facebook Pop-Up Stores
• Making In-Store a Digital, Social Experience
• “Like” as the New Review
• Mobile-Friendly E-Commerce Makes Money
• Letting Your Customers Own the Brand
• Using Facebook Connect for your site registration

Plus you’ll hear the top 3 social innovations they think should be on retailers’ radar for the near future. Plus 1 bonus idea from me!

We hope to see you there!

Follow Andrew Sirotnik at twitter.com/asirotnik

Unless you’ve been putting in time at a mountain monastery, you’ve heard about Google Instant: Google’s innovation launched yesterday to deliver real-time search results as you type keywords in the search box.

Much of the buzz has been around efficiency – getting better results faster. For digital retailers, I think the bigger significance is that Google Instant has transformed search into a great shopping jumping off point.

Searching is now browsing.

The experience Google Instant delivers is very similar to guided browsing (i.e. parametric filters) that you see often on ecommerce catalog pages like this one for The North Face. The consumer doesn’t have to know exactly what they want – they can simply select from a list and the site responds to their interests. It’s an iterative experience.

Like everyone else, I want a cashmere camel coat. In the screenshots above, you see that I get relevant shopping results at “camel cashm…” and can then easily browse between sweaters, coats, cardigans and scarves with the results visually updating real-time.

Google Instant will eventually come to Google Shopping.

It’s very significant that “Shopping” is in the primary navigation at top, prominently featured in the left navigation, and a link in the search results (e.g. “Shopping results for camel cashmere cardigan”). You can absolutely count on Google bringing the Instant capability to their Shopping tab, equipping consumers with shopping filters, view/sort controls, and taking the experience one step closer to a full shopping experience completely outside of retailers’ websites.

Portable content + SEO considerations.

What this means for digital retailers is two things at first glance: 1) increasing the quality and portability of your content, and 2) reviewing your SEO strategy in light of Google’s shift. I don’t have “how-to” answers for the above (yet) – there are many great conversations going on right now and what it means, ranging from recommendations that brands refocus on core/root keywords to povs that seo is now irrelevant because “no one will see the same web anymore, making optimizing it virtually impossible.”

What I know for certain is that digital consumers want the experience that Google is making a reality. Savvy brands and retailers will take advantage of it.

Follow Andrew Sirotnik at twitter.com/asirotnik

The title’s a lie. I love Gilt and have no intention of giving it up completely (even though the private sales aren’t private and they seem to selling every brand under the sun). But I did tire of receiving 1-2 emails every day and finally pulled the trigger and unsubscribed.

Treating customer service interactions as new opportunities to engage.

Gilt really gets digital customer experience. Instead of offering the usual insincere apologies, they deliver a beautifully designed ‘unsubscribe’ screen with an unapologetic “How can I help?” attitude that puts the consumer in control and makes them like Gilt more as a result. It’s very easy to choose “reduce the number of emails I receive” rather than severing the relationship completely.

Offering ways to connect on other channels / devices.

Better yet is that Gilt takes this opportunity to showcase other ways to connect that might fit better than email with one’s digital lifestyle, including the innovative desktop app Gilt Clock with a sale countdown timer, preview of upcoming sales and a link to the calendar. It’s not a leap to imagine them successfully promoting their mobile / iPad apps here as well. (Note: I took the screenshot above a month or so ago so they may already do this.)

I conducted a quick survey of other retailers’ ‘unsubscribe’ experiences. Most were purely transactional and forced the consumer to choose between ending their relationship with the brand or resigning themselves to the status quo (nobody wins in this scenario).

This is another example of the pure play retailers reinventing the details that traditional retailers might accept as established best practices. I think consumers appreciate it and suspect Gilt sees a return from the effort.