With over 300 years of collective experience in online retail and,
in some cases, over a decade of experience working together, the
creative, technical, and business experts of Fluid know thing or
two about interactive product presentation. And with their award-winning
vision and expertise behind Fluid’s recent release of Concept
Retail™, an easy-to-use and comprehensive online merchandising
application suite that unites the interests of brand and business,
interactivity is now available for any and every online retailer.
Now that Concept Display™ (one of three Concept Retail interactive
merchandising applications) is available to all YDesigns customers,
we interviewed four Fluid strategists who played key roles in bringing
Concept Retail to market to get the inside track on taking your
site interactive—easily, effectively, and profitably.
YDesigns (YD): For retailers with multi-tasking
staff that do it all, introducing interactive merchandising might
feel a little intimidating, especially it seems like there are countless
ways to do it. How do you suggest evaluating the differences between
all the online merchandising software products?
Andy Lloyd, vice president of products and marketing:When considering any business application purchase, consider
control. Can you customize the application yourself before you deploy?
Can you easily modify the application after you introduce it onto
your site? How dependent are you on the vendor? The last question
is especially relevant if you see the traditional holiday season
uptick in activity. If a merchandising solution is only available
in a hosted model—and dozens, even hundreds, customers share servers—you’re
depending on the vendor to ensure there are no issues with downtime
or processing speed. Nine months out of the year, a server-based
model can work well for standard dynamic imaging, but holiday season
online traffic can mean significant problems for hosted model users.
With a merchandising solution that you can deploy completely within
your environment, you gain the benefit of complete control over
the application.
YD: So is online merchandising all about a better
dynamic imaging application?
Brian Biggs, product manager, Concept Display:Dynamic imaging, or rapid production of online images enhanced
with interactive features, is an essential feature that your online
merchandising solution must include in some form. But today’s online
consumers expect more than just lots of great product shots. They
expect a best-of-brand online shopping experience that is virtually
like walking into an offline store.
For this reason, product presentation applications like Concept
Display, which ships with ready-to-use interactive display templates,
are usually how online retailers get started in interactive merchandising.
With interactive product presentation applications, online merchandisers
can let shoppers zoom in on product shots, rotate product images,
and change color swatches with a click—and with Concept Display,
they can easily incorporate multiple interactive features into one
product image template.
But dynamic imaging is just a part of the complete online merchandising
picture. Not every interactive feature is right for every product.
To effectively convert shoppers into buyers, merchandisers need
the ability to review the performance of different interactive features
so they can modify or replicate them as quickly and as often as
necessary. When selecting a product presentation application, carefully
review the capabilities to make sure it’s a comprehensive solution
that will help you understand how interactivity performs on your
site.
YD: What other criteria define a comprehensive
online merchandising solution? And do you have any thoughts about
self-built interactivity features?
Mark Belanger, chief technical officer: From
a technical viewpoint, don’t underestimate the importance of a product
that uses proven technology. By “proven”, I not only mean technology
that is in use extensively throughout the retail industry, but technology
that also flexibly and reliably integrates with the other applications
you need to do business. Often, when building an application from
scratch, you can develop fascinating features that are truly one-of-a-kind—only
to find that your new application doesn’t mesh well with the code
that makes your site run. The same rule applies if you decide to
buy an “off-the-shelf” application instead of building one. Carefully
review the technical specifications of any application you’re considering
and ask for clarification of anything you think might have an impact
on your site’s performance. Not all product quality standards are
created equal so the rule during product evaluation is test, test,
and test again. And if you plan to use any AJAX-based technologies
on your site, test extensively across as many browser environments
as possible. While some very interesting functionality is out there,
the various browsers across the Mac and PC universes have subtle
differences. For a more reliable platform across both environments
and to ensure a consistent experience for every shopper, we prefer
applications developed on Adobe® Flash™.
YD: So all that said, what one thing do YDesigns
customers need to know about online merchandising?
Nathan Moody, director of creative services: Let
your brand be your guide. Your brand not only represents the emotional
connection between your product and your users, but also represents
the promise of your product in the marketplace as a whole. Not only
that, if you primarily do business online, the user experience quickly
becomes your brand. Your brand, in even its most abstract verbal
description, holds important cues about how your products should
be presented, how your online interface should look, and even how
your website should act, react, and behave. So even when looking
at the most technical details of an online merchandising solution
or reviewing its most advanced design features, let your brand values
pervade all your merchandising decisions, whether they involve design,
technology, or operations. You'll be amazed how taking this approach
will help you prioritize the best options, unify perceptions of
your product offering, and increase customer loyalty.
