RIS News - Consumers take control with more interactive tools

RIS News published an article about web 2.0 trends by Dave Kelley discussing how consumers are taking control by using more interactive tools.

He delves into various Web 2.0 memes and trends before detailing a few tools of note - including the one we are particularly interested in, Elastic Path. Starting off with a bit of background on the much maligned buzzword du jour:

Since the phrase was coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, “Web 2.0” has become a popular buzzword, although, as noted by Wikipedia, the phrase is “ill-defined and often criticized.” In its original context, Web 2.0 referred primarily to collaborative, Net-based services, Wikipedia itself a prime example. But for retailers, Web 2.0 means embracing the Web as a full-partner channel for both sales and supply chain. It means looking at online commerce as more than a necessary evil. And it means aggressively deploying next-generation applications that allow retailers to exploit the collaborative, Net-based services of O’Reilly’s vision.

After discussing using interactive technology for product personalization, Dave heads into an important topic of speaking the customers’ language. From my vantage point, this is important for both attracting customers by optimizing for “real speak” search terms but also helps convert customers by better assisting them in finding products.

In one scenario he mentions a retailer who launched a Spanish language verison of the site to improve convenience - as well as showing respect and appreciation across customer profiles. Regular readers have probably noticed that many Elastic Path customers leverage the built-in Unicode support allowing site content in any of the world’s linguistic characters sets - from Commercial Chinese to Icelandic to Thai.

Anyhow, the article continues on discussing how adapting to better serving customers is a key to success. He checks in with our friend Rob Levy across the pond at Electric Shopping (more Electric Shopping on Get Elastic), who puts forth:

“Keeping clients is the most important thing,” agrees Robert Levy, managing director/CEO of electricshopping.com, a UK-based retailer of consumer appliances, “so listen to them and act quickly on their requests.” Call it the retailers’ twist on social networking and online collaboration. “As a firm that does 98 percent of its trade over the Web,” Levy says, “this is very important to us. Making full use of the tools available allows us to stay competitive by providing both our customer and customer support with live, accurate, and relevant information, just when they need it.”

The best part for us (let’s be honest here right) is how Rob and Electric Shopping have used Elastic Path to its fullest and then talks openly about it. Of course we think EP is a great application but when we see our ecommerce software working from end-to-end for a customer, that is most pleasing indeed.

Electricshopping.com uses Elastic Path as a base platform, the “software platform that runs the whole company,” in Levy’s words. The all-in-one provides backend processes for electricshopping.com that include financial accounting, stock forecasting, customer management, automatic order processing and progression, and “100% of the order picking and packing processes.”

Exciting stuff for sure and you’ll be seeing a few materials coming down the wire discussing how retailers can use new web technologies including blogs, to help their enterprise flourish by igniting and embracing conversations.

Of course read Dave Kelley’s whole article at RIS News “Consumers take control with more interactive tools” and drop a comment if you have notion.