The Official Fluid Blog

Fluid (@Fluid) recently launched two customization-themed shopping experiences for Sears: Craftsman Custom and The Garage Planner.

Craftsman Custom delivers a premium experience for consumers to tailor a pro-quality tool storage solution to their specific needs and tastes. The experience leverages 3d visualization to deliver a blueprint-like experience that progressively builds into a photo-realistic vision of the consumer’s ideal product, all in real time.

The Sears Garage Planner experience is built on inspirations and “starting point” ideas. Consumers are presented with an interactive photo gallery of shoppable and customizable garage storage solutions. The experience is simultaneously inspirational and actionable, injecting the consumer with ideas and empowering them to make them their own.

Our team has a long history designing shopping experiences for customizable products, including …

• FunStamps (the first personalizable stamps offering)
• Timberland Boot Studio (custom footwear)
• Your Reebok (custom footwear) + facebook configurator
• Design Within Reach FLOR Designer (custom carpet configurator)
• Fine Stationery (card & stationery customizer)
• Vans Customs (custom footwear)

We’re fortunate to collaborate with such great brands to innovate new shopping experiences in such a nascent field. We’re proud to be among the first who have created configurators delivering consumers real-time visualization, product rotation, share-to-phone and integrated social sharing tools.

The business benefits of a better customization experience: 200%+ increase in sales, 16+ minute average consumer engagement on-site, spikes in sharing & heavy engagement with social media customization tools.

Some recent observations, field notes, and expectations looking forward:

• Before the “economic downturn” (or whatever it’s called now), Fluid was seeing RFPs for customization up approx 5-10x showing a sharp increase in interest across industries. The recession put most of those projects on hold.

• Those brands that continued forward became increasingly strategic around customization, seeing it as a brand and business building opportunity. In many cases increasing scope and decreasing timelines in an effort to get to market quickly with robust offerings (a differentiation/barrier strategy).

• Interestingly, over half of these brands are in verticals outside of footwear.

• Embedding up-sells in the customization experience has proven so effective that some retailers are pricing base models at-or-under cost and attaching costs per attribute selection (e.g. premium colors, extra set of laces, etc.).

• Providing the consumer with simple, intuitive social tools — both providing the ability to chat real-time with friends & ability to engage one’s facebook network without ever leaving the customization experience — has become a priority among most of our clients (and now considered a best practice within Fluid).

Finally, three predictions:

1. Customization experiences will take shape in ways that are more subtle and less overt – more about great digital shopping and less about “configurators” per se. This is what most consumers want. Thoughtful experiences that embed customization vs. customization being the main draw will help launch this consumer-driven approach to digital shopping into the mainstream.
2. Customization will make the notion of a crowd-sourced economy a reality. Champion and Keds are first movers (and got a lot of brand benefit as a result + some satisfaction at beating Nike to market I’m sure
3. Customizable shopping experiences will increasingly be deployed exclusively to social channels like facebook. Customizing something lends itself superbly to a community atmosphere – expect to see brands fully leveraging all that facebook has to offer in that regard.

My initial goal was to research and write a blog on sneakers, the sneaker culture, and what drives a ‘sneakerhead’ to seek the most limited/hard to get/wait-in-line-for-2 days type sneakers. But as I set out on my task to contribute to the Fluid blog, I stumbled onto the site miadidas.com. I say ‘stumbled’ because I have not heard or seen much about this site. I knew about NikeID, YourReebok(formerly known as RBKCustom), and the newly updated Vans Custom site among others, but was surprised and somewhat disappointed about just discovering the custom site for Adidas shoes. I’ve seen the in-store experience at the Adidas store in San Francisco, but was not aware it was migrated to the web – or at least a version of it.

With that said, I decided to focus my attention to the site and give my personal review. (more…)

The other night I let my son configure a pair of Vans slip-ons for his 6th birthday. Watching him and his 3 year old brother navigate the process was informative. Two key things I observed:

• My son moused-over every single option for every single product part (not kdding…he methodically moused over every option). This was only possible because Fluid Configure uses client-side technology (Adobe Flex in this case) to do the image previewing, meaning you don’t need a round trip to the server to generate the image.  Using server-side imaging technology this could take an hour or more.
• My 3 year old son asked, “Can we turn it over?” Specifically, even as an observer to the process he wanted to view the product from multiple perspectives. While Vans doesn’t feature the incredible rotation of Your Reebok, but it does show the product from multiple views with great responsiveness.

Overall it was gratifying to see them  quickly grasp the experience, move through the configuration process and take great pleasure from the emails and SMS’s they were able to send letting their family know about the shoes they had just designed. If only the design of their shoes could have been so positive.

At Fluid we’ve delivered some interesting work in the past: Timberland’s Build Your Own Boot Studio (BYOB) was a breakthrough in product configuration, offering instant color change and the first rotation of a custom product. Reebok built upon this by allowing two axes of rotation as well as allowing shoppers to configure a product on a lifestyle photograph. The recent launch of the new Vans configurator, is one of the most exciting client launches during my time at Fluid.

The Vans work builds on many of our learnings of the past years:

• Designing a custom product is stressful. One of the biggest impediments to custom product sales has been the inability to get immediate validation on a design in real time. In the Vans configurator a shopper can send a link to a friend via instant messenger (or email). When the user clicks the link they’ll be brought into a collaborative shopping session where they can share design ideas and give feedback in real time. We believe this will not only increase sales but bring new shoppers to the Vans site.
• Product configuration is an iterative undertaking. We’re providing users a simple “Scratchpad” where they can save their designs in progress for easy reference without logging in. With the scratchpad users can save a design with a single click and return to a previous design just as quickly.
• All of this functionality is part of the Fluid Retail product suite, utilizing both Fluid Configure and Fluid Social. This means we’ll be able to deploy the technology faster and more cost effectively for future customers looking to create similar collaborative shopping experiences.

We couldn’t be more excited to share this client work with you…keep your eyes peeled for future deployments of Fluid Social collaborative shopping deployed in support of collaborative shopping for traditional, mainline products.

A key aspect of Fluid’s user-centric design approach is to engage in usability research early on in the design process. One key element of our approach is to administer usability tests using interactive low-fidelity prototypes. Throughout the years, Fluid has developed a unique technique of developing richly interactive prototypes by adding HTML, CSS and JavaScript within Adobe Fireworks to create click through prototypes that are easy to use, manage and update.

Recently, Adobe asked Fluid to share our approach of rapid prototyping with the Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Dreamweaver developer’s community and we were both honored and excited to do so.

Our in depth article, “Rapid interactive prototyping with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using Fireworks and Dreamweaver CS4″, can be found on Adobe’s website here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/rapid_interactive_prototyping.html

This is the second in a series of posts based on my presentation (”Can I get that in pink and eggplant?”) about the future of customer experience online at the Web Experience Forum in Boston on 14 October 2008.

Mass Customization and Manufacture-on-Demand

Customized products are the ultimate in personalization: customers can select from many options for many attributes to create a product that is unique. This level of customization is made possible my manufacture-on-demand processes. Finished products are not stored in inventory to be picked, packed, and shipped – they are actually manufactured when the order is received.

A potential hazard of customization is that it creates more choice, possibly too much choice, for the consumer. Much has been studied and written about the paradox of choice and decision paralysis, but it boils to situations where there are so many options from which to choose that the consumer is overwhelmed, and it is actually easier to make no choice (and abort the purchase) than to make any choice. When customers are presented with many customizable components, each with many configurable options, the number of combinations may be overwhelming. Therefore we need to design customer experiences that help customers get started, make decisions, support their choices, and encourage them to proceed and complete the process.

One way we can craft more inviting experiences is to manage the number of choices people are given and how they are presented. A manufacture-on-demand process does not need to be transparent to the customer – they do not need to know when products are stocked in inventory versus made when an order is placed.

At the discreet end of the continuum, customers never even know that they are ordering a custom product, because the merchant has pre-defined all of the options and choices (e.g., notebook color, binding, and cover image) and presents the product as a ready-made item. Even though the customer makes no choices beyond selecting a quantity, when the order is placed that product is manufactured.

At the limited level of the customization continuum, consumers realize that they are ordering a customized product, but they may not realize the extent to which that product may actually be customized, because the merchant has pre-defined some some of the options (e.g., ink color and envelope interior pattern) but left a few for the customer to specify (e.g., text on the notecard and the font.) The product is still manufactured when the order is placed, but the number of choices has been controlled to make the personalization process simpler and faster.

Finally, at the level of full customization, consumers realize they are are ordering a customized product, and they understand that it will be manufactured just for them when the order is placed. (Curiously, some customers still think that all variations on custom products have been manufactured in advance and stored in a warehouse awaiting selection and shipment when an order is placed, because they may not fully realize the number of combinations possible and that it would not be feasible to make every possible version of a product.) The choices and options are numerous, and the messaging about the product and customization service typically makes it clear that a product is being made just for the consumer according to their specifications.

There are web sites already offering mass customization of products, and we are likely to see more and more as the ability to manufacture-on-demand becomes more widespread. Today, manufacturing-on-demand is often limited to a base set of products (e.g., photo mugs and mousepads) to which a custom pattern, color, or text may be applied, or to products that have manufacturing processes that lend themselves more easily to mass customization (e.g., custom shoes.)

Cafe Press and Zazzle both offer a set of base products from which to begin. Customers then add their own personal touches and select from a few options to create products that are uniquely their own and which are manufactured-on-demand.

Reebok offers full-customization of shoes, and consumers have the ability to design their own shoe selecting from so many choices that there are literally trillions of possible combinations. A unique product is actually possible, and there is no way that Reebok could manufacture and stock all possible variations of the shoes – this is made possible only my manufacture-on-demand processes.

The manufacture-on-demand process and the ability to create custom products also quickly and easily opens up the opportunity for online, digital equivalent of “pop-up stores.” Pop-up stores are temporary physical retail stores that open for a short time in a previously empty location, generate buzz and attention, respond to a trend or community need, sell for a limited time, then close and disappear. Companies that have the ability to manufacture-on-demand could respond quickly to current trends, fads, and styles by pre-defining products, opening a temporary web site, and selling those products either under their brand or as an ephemeral brand. They could offer limited edition products, different products for different geographics regions, or even products that are offered only to existing customers. Once the ephemeral brand has run its course, the web site disappears.

Custom products are more than just choice for the consumer, they are also opportunities for the companies that are able to manufacture-on-demand, who want to differentiate their product offering, and who are able to quickly and nimbly respond to styles, fads, and market trends.

As consumers tuck away their wallets and retailers feel the budget squeeze (despite the fact that online sales continue to rise) Fluid has put together a set of consulting offerings designed to deliver tangible and immediate ROI on a limited budget.

These packages range from $25,000 – $45,000 and are designed to let our clients tap into our expertise in ecommerce customer experience without breaking the bank.

The four initial offerings include:

• A high level expert review of your online store, delivering a prioritized list of areas for immediate improvement including key dropout points in the conversion cycle.
• Targeted analysis of your product detail page and identification of key areas for improvement. Final deliverables include analysis of current page, redesigned schematics and a few visual design directions.
• Checkout flow analysis, investigating the process from cart to transaction and including detailed suggestions from wireframes to visual design.
• Web 2.0 interactive merchandising audit that identifies crucial areas for customer interaction and ways in which rich media can engage shoppers and move them toward a conversion. This solution includes design direction as well as creation of functional, production-ready interactive merchandising components.

We are excited to offer solutions that are specifically designed to meet the needs of the current challenging environment. Thus far, we have had a strong response from retailers looking to use these packages to learn from this year’s holiday season and implement a more effective site in early 2009.

This is the first in a series of posts based on my presentation (”Can I get that in pink and eggplant?”) about the future of customer experience online at the Web Experience Forum in Boston on 14 October 2008.

Video is the next JPEG

Just as static images are seamlessly incorporated into web pages today, we are going to see more seamless integration of video that moves beyond the use of an inline video player. Video will become integral to the content and not be a separate piece of content meant for independent interaction.

In the Harry Potter films, the Daily Prophet newspaper has “magic moving pictures” printed on the page as part of the news article. There is no separate video page and no video player off to the side – the moving pictures are simply integrated into the content of the page.

The Ralph Lauren site Rugby.com integrates video into the page content in a similar manner: the video, the images, and the text all live in the same space as part of a single experience. The brand experience is enhanced and strengthened by using simple yet high-quality video to supplement the information.

Video has the benefit of being able to convey more information than a static image. Seeing clothing on a walking, moving, breathing person tell us much more about fit and finish than a still image on a white background.  We can understand much better how a product might, work, or behave by seeing it in action.

At Martin & Osa the models take turns moving, walking, and turning around to demonstrate how the clothing fits. There is a great nuance to the customer experience: when you select a filter to narrow down your selection, the models wearing clothes that do not match the filter literally walk off the screen. Video is being used not only to show products, but to verify and acknowledge customer interactions.

Video can also tell a story much better than a single image. Would you rather watch a short film or view a single frame from a short film? And the story does not need to focus on the product – it may be used to enhance the brand, to inspire people, and even to set a mood.

The North Face uses video in several ways: demonstrate products in use, educate about the professionals who use the products, show the environments and usages for which the products were developed, and show how the company supports athletes, indigenous peoples, and environmental causes.

And of course video can be used to facilitate shopping, but rather than showing models wearing clothes or salespeople demonstrating products, we can also shop from the same video we see on television and in the movies.

“Shopisodes” take video from popular television programs and provide images, details, and links to buy the products that appear in the video. You can buy the clothes and accessories worn by favorite actors, furniture and decorations from their homes and rooms, and even the items they are using. Each video segment is created to provide information and a link when that product is visible.

Video for product merchandising falls into two categories:

• “Fast” video is meant to be watched like a short film; it provides context and information, and it demonstrates products in use; “fast” video is not clickable, and it is more likely a passive, entertaining experience.
• “Slow” video is meant to provide information while remaining clickable; it focuses on the products and provides ample opportunity to interact with the video while it plays.

Video may also come in a range of quality levels. Low fidelity video has an amateur appearance, may be customer-generated (although professionally produced video may intentionally take on this style), and generally focuses on product information and usage rather than brand enhancement (e.g., product reviews submitted by real customers.) High fidelity video has a professional appearance and may convey a much wider range of information, from product usage to brand ideals to corporate social responsibility.

Although video is becoming increasingly important to the online experience, it is not yet ubiquitous, and there are some issues to be resolved. Video requires much more bandwidth, and although more and more people have broadband access, web pages with integrated video still have longer load times, so visitors wait for content. Additionally, there are still many video formats. Even though Flash Video is perhaps the most common format for inline video today, there are competing formats that offer higher quality video and audio but with a different customer experience, and there are differences across browsers and operating systems that mean that some formats may not be viewable to all visitors.

Nevertheless, the movement toward integrated video is certainly underway, and we are seeing more video being used to provide information and content in more places than ever before. Although we cannot yet walk to the corner and buy a copy of the Daily Prophet, it may not be long before we commonly have similar experiences when browsing the web.

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.

Two and one-half years ago Fluid began a design project for Charles Schwab to craft a whole new web experience and look-and-feel for their customer account management portal. The design project coincided with a significant effort on Schwab’s part to update, enhance, and extend the entire back-end system responsible for account data, security, transactions, and content management, so the new site had to accomplish a few key goals:

• Create an experience that inspires trust, confidence, and credibility in all customers.
• Provide quick and easy access to consolidated account data and all transactional functions.
• Offer improved and new functionality without displacing or deprecating existing functionality customers had come to expect and rely upon.
• Modernize the site’s design to leverage new interaction patterns to provide access to deeper content without overwhelming or alienating customers.
• Consolidate the site’s research data and information into a more logically organized structure to improve findability and usability.
• Integrate the many marketing and awareness campaigns into a single, rule-guided system for presentation within the account management center.
• Extend the brand guidelines from the print, broadcast, and online marketing to the customer account center while crafting a reliable, efficient, and focused customer experience.

Schwab’s previous site (which is still available during this transition period) has been serving their customers for more than six years. During that time browser technology and customer expectations have changed, the site (like all web sites) grew organically to accommodate changing business needs, and the customer experience become fragmented and occasionally unfocused. Fluid was charged with helping Schwab craft a new, unified vision for the customer experience and then defining a design system that would essentially be everything to everyone, because in the world of finance the margin of error is zero. Mistakes in the customer experience cause customers to doubt the reliability of a system, and when that system is responsible for their money customers have no tolerance for mistakes.

The design process lasted ten months, starting with six weeks of stakeholder interviews and customer research. We crafted wireframes for hundreds of distinct pages and screens for six months, and during this time we went into the usability labs with click-through prototypes for eight rounds of testing with actual customers. Any feature or function that did not test well would be re-designed and tested again – only when an interaction was successful in two consecutive rounds of testing would it be removed from the task list and marked as “validated.” At the same time we were crafting and testing prototypes, we were also working closely with the internal brand group to establish a look-and-feel for the entire customer account management center, and in the last three rounds of testing we presented prototypes that incorporated the updated visual design, because the way a web site looks can actually have an effect on usability.

When all of the core and essential functionality and the new look-and-feel had been tested and validated, we moved into a refinement phase to extend the design to the remainder of the account management center. The project culminated in the delivery of a pair of extensive style guides that defined the design system and patterns for the interaction, information, and visual design.

Now, more than one and one-half years since the end of the design phase, the new Schwab Customer Account Center is being rolled out to all customers.  How well has the design been implemented, and how well does it hold up? I’m happy to say that it has been implemented very well – the design and experience are true to the vision and to what was tested so successfully with so many real customers.  Compare for yourself:

The previous Schwab Customer Account Center:

The new and improved Schwab Customer Account Center:

The new design increases content density, the organizational structure is actually flatter and makes it easier to find information, functionality has been made more efficient, and the entire experience from account data to transactions to market research is now consistent and on-brand.

Congratulations to everyone at Charles Schwab who had a vision for excellent customer experience and service, who demanded exacting standards, and who maintained focus while seeing this project come to fruition! Fluid is proud to have been a partner in this effort and in your continued success.