Sunday, March 12, 2006
New Alerts Aim to Simplify Web Shopping
Looking for new ways to reach consumers, retailers like eBags, ICE.com, TowerRecords.com and others are using RSS, or "really simple syndication," to feed product alerts to Internet users who have set up personalized Web pages on Yahoo, Google, and other sites. By giving merchants another free way to reach consumers, these alerts serve as a hedge against the recent move by AOL and Yahoo to start charging for some commercial bulk e-mail deliveries. More importantly, retailers see them as a way to reach consumers who are growing weary of commercial e-mail.
"I don't know how many e-mails you get a day, but I can't keep up," said Jon Nordmark, the chief executive of eBags. "Rather than delivering a slightly relevant message to a person's mailbox, this allows us to get customers very detailed information directly." This month, consumers who visit either the company's main site or its shoe site, 6pm.com, will see RSS icons near the sites' products, with messages offering users regular updates on those products. Once a user has indicated a preference for, say, black size 11 Cole Haan shoes, he clicks on the icon telling the company to send the alerts to his personalized page, then confirms the request by signing into that page.
If the user directs eBags to deliver alerts to a My Yahoo page, eBags will send the alert typically an item description with a photo only when it has a new product or a promotion relevant to the specified items. Nordmark said RSS feeds were especially useful for Web sites like his that offer a vast array of products. eBags sells nearly 20,000 bags, while 6pm.com sells about 125,000 shoe styles. Customers might not surf through all the merchandise each time they visit. But RSS is, he said, "a way to basically position highly relevant microsites in front of consumers."
Consumers had yet to warm to the technology in meaningful numbers even though the little orange RSS boxes have sprouted like mushrooms on scores of mainstream Web sites in the past year, said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with the online consultancy Forrester Research. According to a Forrester survey last year, just 14 percent of Internet users even know what RSS is, and fewer than 5 percent have used it. Some consumers do not know they're using RSS. According to comScore Networks, an Internet research firm, more than 30 million people had created personalized Yahoo home pages as of December, setting up personalized stock quotes, news feeds and other information that is delivered via RSS. To make RSS more widely understood, executives and analysts agree that retailers will have to do a fair amount of hand-holding. Shoppers browsing for the latest fashions might be reluctant to click on a daunting "what is RSS?" link.
Peter Cobb, an eBags vice president, said the company would rely on its catalogs, among other things, to spread the word. Retailers with a dynamic product mix and customers who are passionate about new products are particularly well suited to RSS feeds. TowerRecords.com, for instance, allows users to sign up to hear about new music releases in a variety of genres, through its "Tower Alerts" service. Travel sites like Kayak, SideStep, Travelocity, Orbitz and others have also recently introduced RSS feeds showing good deals or destination suggestions. One of the few retail sites with enough history to gauge the effectiveness of RSS as a sales tool is Burpee.com, the Web division of the seed manufacturer W. Atlee Burpee in Warminster, Penn.
According to Ethan Holland, the company's director of e-commerce, Burpee began helping customers set up RSS feeds about products in late 2004, and now more than 10,000 receive the alerts. Holland said the company sent five RSS updates weekly that differed from Burpee's e-mail messages in that they were "more lighthearted, kind of like a blog posting which I think you can get away with since you're dealing with people who are more familiar with the casual nature of the Internet." The tool has had a marginal effect on sales, Holland said, adding, "But the investment has been almost nothing for us, so we're definitely getting money back."
Brought to you by Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal Program.
"I don't know how many e-mails you get a day, but I can't keep up," said Jon Nordmark, the chief executive of eBags. "Rather than delivering a slightly relevant message to a person's mailbox, this allows us to get customers very detailed information directly." This month, consumers who visit either the company's main site or its shoe site, 6pm.com, will see RSS icons near the sites' products, with messages offering users regular updates on those products. Once a user has indicated a preference for, say, black size 11 Cole Haan shoes, he clicks on the icon telling the company to send the alerts to his personalized page, then confirms the request by signing into that page.
If the user directs eBags to deliver alerts to a My Yahoo page, eBags will send the alert typically an item description with a photo only when it has a new product or a promotion relevant to the specified items. Nordmark said RSS feeds were especially useful for Web sites like his that offer a vast array of products. eBags sells nearly 20,000 bags, while 6pm.com sells about 125,000 shoe styles. Customers might not surf through all the merchandise each time they visit. But RSS is, he said, "a way to basically position highly relevant microsites in front of consumers."
Consumers had yet to warm to the technology in meaningful numbers even though the little orange RSS boxes have sprouted like mushrooms on scores of mainstream Web sites in the past year, said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst with the online consultancy Forrester Research. According to a Forrester survey last year, just 14 percent of Internet users even know what RSS is, and fewer than 5 percent have used it. Some consumers do not know they're using RSS. According to comScore Networks, an Internet research firm, more than 30 million people had created personalized Yahoo home pages as of December, setting up personalized stock quotes, news feeds and other information that is delivered via RSS. To make RSS more widely understood, executives and analysts agree that retailers will have to do a fair amount of hand-holding. Shoppers browsing for the latest fashions might be reluctant to click on a daunting "what is RSS?" link.
Peter Cobb, an eBags vice president, said the company would rely on its catalogs, among other things, to spread the word. Retailers with a dynamic product mix and customers who are passionate about new products are particularly well suited to RSS feeds. TowerRecords.com, for instance, allows users to sign up to hear about new music releases in a variety of genres, through its "Tower Alerts" service. Travel sites like Kayak, SideStep, Travelocity, Orbitz and others have also recently introduced RSS feeds showing good deals or destination suggestions. One of the few retail sites with enough history to gauge the effectiveness of RSS as a sales tool is Burpee.com, the Web division of the seed manufacturer W. Atlee Burpee in Warminster, Penn.
According to Ethan Holland, the company's director of e-commerce, Burpee began helping customers set up RSS feeds about products in late 2004, and now more than 10,000 receive the alerts. Holland said the company sent five RSS updates weekly that differed from Burpee's e-mail messages in that they were "more lighthearted, kind of like a blog posting which I think you can get away with since you're dealing with people who are more familiar with the casual nature of the Internet." The tool has had a marginal effect on sales, Holland said, adding, "But the investment has been almost nothing for us, so we're definitely getting money back."
Brought to you by Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal Program.
