Chance finds with online shopping

I have never been a fan of shopping on the high street. I try to avoid it until it is absolutely necessary and then, and only then will I brave the crowds, and the queues, and the obsequious shop staff. Shopping online is a better alternative, in my mind anyway. There are, of course drawbacks to shopping online that you don’t get on the high street. When buying clothes for example, you don’t get to see or feel them before you buy, never mind try them on. Although some sites offer video options which allow you to see what the clothes look like on, it is not the same.

From a business perspective, customers are also less likely to come across something that they didn’t think they needed or wanted, but realise that they can’t live without when shopping online. On the high street, products are mixed in together so customers have to search for items and it is much easier to wander around a store casually looking at things. Supermarkets, too, frequently change the placement of products to maximise customers’ spend. These types of experiences can be difficult to replicate in online stores, where traditionally chance finds are not commonplace.

However, when buying other items, such as books or CDs, seeing and feeling them before you buy is not so important; but a fortuitous find could greatly improve a shopping experience. Amazon cleverly uses recommendations to help customers do this online. They work in two ways. First, recommendations on which products to buy are made to customers based on what other customers (who bought the same products as them) have bought. Second, Amazon recommends products that are similar to the ones that the customer has already bought. Although this sounds deceptively simple, Amazon were the first to adopt this approach to selling, and judging by their success, and its adoption by other online retailers, it works. This sort of practice is now becoming the norm and a high proportion of high street clothing retailers will now recommend a shirt or t-shirt that will go with the pair of jeans that you are looking at.

I came across another way of doing this the other day. The Book Depository website has long been a seller on Amazon, and in addition to the Amazon style approach to recommendations it also has a section that allows you to ‘Watch people shop‘. This novel and interesting tool, which combines the voyeurism of big brother with shopping, allows you to see what people are buying and where they are buying it from. Admittedly, this approach is not as user focussed as the Amazon paradigm, but it did succeed in keeping me engaged and on their site, so I guess it is working to some extent. And although when I recently bought something from the Book Depository it was not something that I spotted on the ‘Watch people shop’ option, I do think that this type of approach is a step forward towards engaging customers and shepherding them towards the products companies want them to buy. Even though the novelty of this approach may wane (like the soon to be axed big brother TV show), I think that ultimately these types of experiences will pay dividends in the long run.