Mercantec: Net/Net (Part 8 of 8)
Net/Net
Online retailers talk a lot these days about creating the ultimate
shopping experience, but sometimes the discussion is more about window
dressing than about the issues that are integral to the functioning of
the site. While web retailers do need their online equivalent of Henry
Selfridge, the legendary designer who created the department store
display window, they also need other substantial strategies to attract
customers.
Being attuned to the needs of its customers, Mercantec is thinking
intelligently about developing the total online shopping experience,
and, to this end, the experience should reflect the way people actually
shop. Working with the premise that men and women shop differently and
that women make up the bulk of all shoppers, Mercantec's plans to design
systems for attracting consumers through relevant content sources
represents a promising step toward introducing an element of serendipity
to the online shopping experience, and in turn making the experience more
like its counterpart in the offline world, i.e. browsing.
Putting aside the inherent problems with stereotyping behaviors based on
sex, the company is at least thinking more deeply and systematically about
the customer experience. On the other hand, it might make more sense for
Mercantec to consider the shopping experience as activity-centered as
opposed to item-centered and then use this point of view to drive its
product and service development. For example, while men and women may
shop for and buy a car differently, there is an archetypal "car buying"
experience that transcends gender and may include a whole system of
peripheral products and services that are part of this overall experience.
Offline retailers like IKEA understand this by creating catalogs where
they are selling room environments, not just individual products.
There are at least two major challenges that Mercantec may face. First,
if the company is to become the undisputed leader in helping the merchants
who use its software to create great online shopping experiences, it will
need to develop a component for customer profiling that can be shared
across merchants. Currently, Mercantec keeps a customer history, but it
is not shared. While profiling is technologically feasible, it is wrought
with political and legal repercussions.
One only has to recall the recent collaborative filtering flack that
descended upon Amazon.com or the ongoing debate over cookies (vis-à-vis
DoubleClick) to understand the virtual minefield that a company can step
onto if they are surreptitious about collecting customer information. But
it doesn't have to be this way: collecting information about customers
does not have to be akin to pulling teeth. Merchants need to incentivize
consumers to hand over information about themselves-the system will work
only if little rewards are given by profilers in the way of discounts or
gift certificates.
Second, Mercantec should develop inexpensive tools that allow its clients
to gather and aggregate internal business performance metrics such as the
number of lost shopping carts or the number of return customers, perhaps
organized by type of merchant so it can compare itself with its peers.
Most individual stores keep this kind of data, but they rarely obtain
access to data like this that has been collected in a systematic way
across a number of similar retailers. This kind of data may be expensive
and hard to obtain otherwise.
And lastly, the success of the company's perpetual commerce program
depends entirely on the ability to increase sales at the customer's
sites. If Mercantec can pull this off, it wins big. If not, it remains
a provider of a very good point product.
Part 1 - Mercantec
|