The Official Fluid Blog

Social Design Principle #3 – Appeal to the Unique Individual

Social Design can recommend products in a smarter, more relevant way that appeals to your customers’ unique individuality.  It is more powerful to present a customized list of items “We think YOU will like…” rather than simply presenting “Related Items.”

Previously we discussed the value of customer reviews as a source of unbiased product information, but in some cases they may be puzzling or less useful to customers. Reviews may have less value when shopping for certain types of products. Books, movies, clothes, and shoes are often reviewed based solely on personal preference. While one person may love a movie, another may hate it.  With this in mind, how do customers find or know what is relevant to them?  Making better connections between customers and products requires a better recommendation system to identify items that will appeal to the unique individual:

1. Personalize the Recommendation– Present recommendations in a context relevant to the individual, and they will be more likely to engage with your products.
2. Build Customer Reputation – Encourage participation by allowing customers to earn a reputation for themselves in the context of the rest of the community.
3. Give users a “Me” page –Give customers a unique space dedicated to content meaningful to their shopping habits. This can be a valuable tool and help inform purchasing decisions.

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Social Design Principle 2: Encourage Authentic Conversations

Previously we identified how important it is to deliver unbiased information to consumers and cited the Amazon Effect as evidence.  Authentic conversations promote products, get valuable customer feedback, and establish a presence and a voice for your brand.  There are many methods, but the two most common are:

• Maintain a blog – Blogs are great for engaging in dialog with customers and initiating ways to discuss products, services, and future feature development.
• Use Authentic Advertising – Promote products in an unbiased, authentic way.

Start a Blog
How can a company initiate authentic conversations?  First, start and maintain a blog.  It’s easy, it’s cheap, and it’s familiar to customers as a way to interact and communicate with both the blog authors (the company) and other blog readers (the community)!   Make your blog a window on your company and reach out to customers.  Engage them, and ask them about both their good and bad experiences with your products and services.

“When you have authentic conversations with people, you learn enough to actually improve your product with them, freeing you from the need for the hard sell.  No longer will you have to convince people your software is worth it, because by working with the very people you’re selling to, you’re guaranteeing a valuable product.” – Joshua Porter, Designing for the Social Web

Some retail web sites place their blog on the homepage of their store.  Woot.com, an online retail web site features one discounted product per day on their homepage, and they present it in the context of a blog post.  This product is then advertised via RSS and Twitter feeds, and the blog post attracts hundreds of customer comments and even more exposure every day.  This daily blog guarantees a constant stream of fresh, new content and drives return visits.

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I spent some time evaluating search boxes and their functionality, trying to come up with a list of best practices in use by Internet Retailer’s (IR) Hot 100 e-commerce websites to determine how these successful sites stand up to my challenge. Having never truly pondered the best practices that one might employ for the familiar white space found on most sites, I came up with a list of criteria and used this list as a framework to quantify IR Hot 100 sites on their best behaviour. Values were assigned to each feature to determine total values overall, where a site could score up to 21 points.

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Social Design Principle 1: Encourage Information Sharing

The average person is bombarded with 500-3000 advertisements per day.  With so many ads surrounding us, it is not surprising that people to receive them with distrust and skepticism, “Of course an ad is only going to tell me what the company wants me to hear!

Traditional advertising, as done in the 1940s and 1950s, is more effective when there are only a limited number of brands from which to choose, but as Barry Schwartz wrote in The Paradox of Choice, this is far from the case today.  The industrial age has resulted in hundreds of brands, and social applications are a highly successful technology we use to help us efficiently sift through all of this information to find what is valuable and meaningful.

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At Fluid, we leverage new and innovative technologies to set our clients apart from their competitors.  Recently our clients have been asking about “social” features more often. “Social” is the latest buzz word flitting back and forth in the media, and it has caught the attention of both retailers and agencies . “Social” is a term that carries weight: The numbers we see on Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr are hard to ignore.  Retail companies are now looking for ways to make “social” features work for them, too.

A large part of the fun in shopping is being able to do it collaboratively.  Friends help inform our decisions about what we should buy. They give their opinions on fit, help pick out the perfect pair of shoes, and they are a part of what makes shopping fun.  Unfortunately, this desired social interaction has largely been lost as stores move online, and while the fun one has when shopping with friends cannot be wholly replaced, social design continues to introduce new ways to improve the collaborative nature of the online shopping experience.

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At Fluid we are constantly tuning our work to deliver the richest experiences without sacrificing performance and download times. To that end, one of our lead engineers, Cody Lindley, put together a great resource on the page weights for the leading ecommerce pages. I wanted to share it here, for everyone’s benefit. (the pages highlighted in yellow are Fluid customers, though in some cases the pages measured were not built by us)

Victor Lombardi, a well-respected designer and educator, recently posted a video on his company’s Smart Experience web site about designing carousels and the three key design criteria you need to know to design carousels well:

1. Carousels work best with images, not text
2. Carousels are great for browsing, not searching
3. Carousels should create a sense of depth and extent, not be flat

Fluid’s recent work for Reebok, the “Reebok Globe” that highlights real customers and shows their designs, was featured in this video as a good example of strong design, not just for its 3D carousel (the “globe”), but also for using nested carousels in an effective way to enhance the customer experience. If you’re interested in Victor’s comments about Fluid’s “Reebok Globe”, skip ahead to 3min 15 sec.

Unfortunately, this carousels video is only free for a limited time, so check it out soon.

As a Netflix customer with a slow home connection, I am a big fan of the “Quick View” roll-over used in ecommerce sites, allowing a user to see information prior to clicking to the product detail page. It is useful and efficient to…

• see a larger picture and different views of the product
• get easy access to your next action (i.e. check shipping, see sizing chart, add to cart)
• see more detailed information

Without waiting for a page to load, presumably a user can get to most of the information needed to make a purchase.

I spent some time reviewing the Hot 100 Internet Retailer Sites, some of the Top 500, and other interesting apparel sites. The  Quick View information varied in format, presentation and placement:

• Roll-over vs. Click: Some sites offer the Quick View upon roll-over, some upon click. Those with the click version usually show much more comprehensive and important information for a purchase decision, as the format allows for tabs, buttons and links to further information. For instance, Borders.com offers a detailed description, list price, your price, shipping info, customer ratings, a browsing function to other products, and links to add to cart, reserve in-store, or add to wish list.  For most products, more information is better for decision-making, but for some sites such as Ace Hardware, simple bulleted information upon roll-over feels fine, as it offers what I need to know (a bigger image is seemingly not as important for insect repellent or paint thinner).

• Quick View vs. Sub-category Add-to-Cart: One advantage of Quick View functionality is the ability to access an action (buying) without the extra step of opening the product detail page. Of the 150 sites I reviewed, 29 offer some sort of Quick View option. Of those, 16 offer the ability to add to cart (55%). But as an alternative, about 20% of those sites without Quick View have add to cart directly on the sub-category page, mostly in the food, electronics, or pharmacy categories, which can be as useful for simpler purchases (i.e. Bulbs.com).

• Quick View Larger Image: For apparel, fashion, or any product category where what it looks like is a key selling factor, a bigger image in Quick View is imperative. It is disappointing to click on Wetseal or Meijer.com’s Quick View only to get an image practically the same size, with only a bit more information about the product and no mechanism to view larger. The North Face’s Quick View not only gives 3 tabs of information about the product (options, features, specifications), the ability to add to cart, but it also gives several views of the product and a magnified view upon roll-over. Gap.com’s Quick View also offers a larger image through a view larger button which launches a pop-up window with a very large image.

• Larger Images Only: Some Quick Views only offer larger images (pseudo-Quick Views, really). This is helpful to gauge product interest, but if there is no add to cart functionality from the Quick View, to purchase the user has to close the larger view, click to the product detail page, and then click add to cart to purchase, so although helpful, it’s overall not as streamlined for purchase. Novica.com offers a gigantic pop-up image, but no additional info or add to cart. The Runningwarehouse.com offers more detailed information on the sub-catgory page, and the pop-up view is a 360-rotation view of the product; again, helpful, but not an ideal workflow. (As a side note, Levi.com offers a visually inefficient version of the larger view; on roll-over an image shows larger, but it is in a set white space on the right of the page. When there is no larger image, that white space is strangely blank.)

• Sub-Category Alt Views: Another interesting presentation in lieu of a Quick View is to offer a alternate or magnified view upon roll-over on the sub-category page. It is an active, interesting way to present pertinent buying information. As I was browsing bathing suits on EddieBauer.com, I found it very useful to see both the back and the front views just by running my mouse across the page. The execution could be improved overall, as some other categories (sweaters) do not consistently show the back view; views are interspersed with color choices, larger views, which is more of a less elegant presentation.

For sites without Quick View, often times it was logical not to offer it, as most of the pertinent information was on the sub-category page. Along with add to cart, some sub-cats also include reviews, colors offered (and sometimes color changes), shipping information, availability, etc. The only issue with this method is a page overloaded with information and choices. Walmart.com is an example of a rather cluttered page, albeit for fairly practical purchases where information is important.

On the other end of the spectrum, Sunglass hut elegantly shows only a picture of the product (without price or product name) on the sub-category page, and upon roll-over, the price and name appear, including very subtle add to cart, compare or wishlist icons.

No matter what the presentation, information offered prior to the page load of the product detail page enables and speeds the purchase process for a consumer.

Fluid is pleased to announce the launch of a new site design for Diapers.com. The new site, designed by the Fluid team, also leverages the Fluid Experience merchandising suite to create a compelling brand and shopping experience. The redesign enables Diapers.com to scale into thousands of new products while continuing to provide a convenient, helpful and fun place to shop for moms and dads of young children.
You can read more about the site in this article on Internet Retailer.

The recent re-design of The North Face web site has been featured on Ecommr, a site that identifies and highlights a collection of ecommerce interface and design elements that represent excellent, new, and innovative design.

The new North Face design elements featured are:

• Product listing index
• Recommended items
• Color and size selector
• Rich mini-cart
• Full shopping cart
• Billing and shipping page during checkout

The design of The North Face site contributes to an engaging and rich customer experience, and few of the ecommerce sites featured on Ecommr have as many design elements highlighted, which speaks well to the quality of the design and experience.