Earlier this week we discussed why enlarged images, alternate product views and showing products in context can help conversion.

But what about “user generated images” (or the friendlier term “customer submitted photos”)? Are they just social media / Web 2.0 hype or do they really improve customer experience?

Customer images may be used to help sell product (like customer reviews complement product descriptions) or just build community (if the retailer has a community section). Either way, customer submitted photos have their challenges:

• Image quality can vary from submission to submission. Dark or fuzzy images really don’t add value and can hurt the consistency and professionalism of your site.

• Attracting images can be a challenge - only a small percentage of customers will take the time to create a picture and send it to you.
• Moderating images for appropriateness and relevance takes extra time.

Let’s look at some examples of how online retailers are using customer submitted photos:

Product Pages

You may have noticed that Amazon shows customer images along with its own product images:

You can roll over the thumbnails to view larger versions and even read notes that users have left on them:

This is helpful as a customer review - the color on the web is not the color in the box.

Customer Reviews

Power Reviews allows photo attachments to reviews, as spotted on Uncommon Goods:

(Sometimes customers pick useless tags…)

What I like about this approach is it’s seamless. Good review content is not separated into text vs. image reviews. On Amazon, a very helpful tip like the color is actually more mint than neon green could be missed unless you read reviews AND view pictures. Plus, it’s less programming work when your reviews product has image upload already available.

Customer Testimonials

Modern Line Furniture has a testimonials page with customer images linked to from the home page (though the call-to-action gets a bit lost in the home page clutter).

The testimonials page links through to the product pages for items featured in the room. Yay! There’s hope for a transaction!

Community / Resource Section

Some retailers actually have a community component to their e-stores, like David’s Bridal. Customers can upload pictures from their weddings, and brides-to-be can surf them to get inspiration for dress styles and color schemes.

While this is a good idea, the community section is kind of a dead end — there is no link back to products or tools that facilitate a purchase decision like shop-by-color.

Alternative Energy Store has a similar community gallery, but without links to products or buying guides, it’s not very helpful.

With links to products, the gallery could be a social tool for product discovery. I just haven’t come across a retailer who’s doing that well (community gallery that aids shopping). Have you? Please share your find in the comments.

It was only one year ago my first Get Elastic post went live, how quickly the year has gone! The post was the Social Shopping Roundup and it showcased many social shopping start-ups from social bookmarking or “wishlisting,” to deals and coupon sharing communities and social comparison engines.

According to Hitwise analyst, Heather Dougherty “The Social Shopping category is still small, receiving less than 1% of the total market share of US visits, but there has been significant growth.” (Source)

Scott Hurff of CSE Strategies puts it into perspective - MySpace receives about 2% of Internet traffic. So for every 2 hits on MySpace (or Facebook), someone’s checking out a social shopping site. Of the social shopping sites, Kaboodle appears to be the Google in terms of market share:

• Kaboodle 68%

• Buzzillions 8.23% (Ratings and Reviews, Comparison Shopping)
• ThisNext 7.23%
• ShopWiki 6.89%
• Stylehive 5.18%

With the exception of Buzzillions, the top 5 are “social bookmarking” sites. There are no doubt countless other sites where consumers can bookmark and share products, deals and coupons, read ratings and reviews and find deals - and perhaps as many Facebook applications. We don’t need a comprehensive list of players in this space. Rather, this year’s roundup focuses on social shopping sites that address key trends in ecommerce like video / widget marketing, live chat, email / RSS, user-generated merchandising or offer a twist on traditional comparison shopping.

Video / Widget Marketing

Qoof.com

Qoof provides product video widgets for etailers and content publishers (affiliates) to bring an interactive experience to product descriptions. The Flash-based widget can be embedded on the etailer’s website or on the affiliate site. Transactions can actually be completed through the widget which eliminates the need for a shopping cart, or the customer can be directed to the online store to purchase. You can check out the Widget Showcase with examples from Ice.com, Drugstore.com and more.

What early adopters of this product may enjoy is the ability to stand out from other affiliate offers. Product video is growing in popularity, and it won’t be long before most sites offer some kind of video complement to product images. You may also be more attractive to affiliates who are looking for multi-media content to boost their own conversions.

Whether customers like it or not is a different story. To be honest, there are not a lot of ecommerce widgets out there so I have my fingers crossed that there will be more interesting things being done with portable video content by this time next year, with more data on its effectiveness.

How to get involved: See Qoof.com’s Etailer Page.

Continue Reading:
Social Shopping Reviews Roundup: 2008 Update »

Online retailers like NetShops and Rugsale are using a third-party service called ShopTogether, where customers can…you guessed it…shop together online.

This also has amazing potential for personal selling from your live chat customer service reps.

This is what the ShopTogether interface looks like:

Get Started

Invite a Friend

You can see what your friend is viewing, share favorites and have live chat. It’s easy to click on the items to jump right to their product pages.

This has the potential to take live chat to the next level. Your customer service representatives offer suggestions (out of stock alternatives, accessories, cross-sells and up-sells) which the customer can click right through to and ask further questions. The customer service rep would be able to probe the customer and then make recommendations. Of course the customer service rep would need to be as knowledgeable about your website and its products as any in-store sales associate.

Throw web cams, telephone or VoIP into the mix, and you get pretty darn close to the brick-and-mortar experience.

What do you think? Will we see more sites going this route or is this too costly to work? Would you enjoy shopping this way if you needed help with a purchase?

We social media marketing types toss around buzzwords like “user generated content” all the time. But Etsy is a unique ecommerce-slash-social-shopping-network that has truly made “user generated products” its hallmark. Selling only handmade items from different crafters around the world, Etsy is like eBay minus the auction.

In this electronic press release, Etsy sellers talk about the site, and how they enjoy connecting personally with their customers through the community, and with other sellers.

The site itself has a number of amazing Web 2.0 features like shop by color and a home page that shows you a live feed of new items as they are added - a bit like YouTube’s home page that shows currently viewed videos.

The Treasury is like Polyvore, where users create “sets” that others can browse and buy from - or user-generated cross-selling.

And the community can participate in forums, live chat, “Teams” (special interest groups) and even Virtual Labs where you can join live workshops and classes or get tips on setting up and marketing your Etsy shop.

If you sell handmade items through your own website, you may consider tapping into this marketplace if you haven’t already.

PS, the electronic press release is a great way to make you stand out. When someone’s getting barraged by pitches daily, giving them a video to look at and post gives you a nice advantage.

Today, we all know how important customer reviews are to retailers and customers alike. They help convert buyers by building trust and confidence in the product, they reduce returns, draw long-tail search traffic and are a simple entry into on-site communities for ecommerce websites.

But there was a time when no one had them. It makes you wonder what we’re missing today that we don’t know we’re missing.

Let’s take another effective merchandising tool: cross-selling. Currently, ecommerce marketers are banking that their personal cross-sell suggestions or algorithmic-based recommendations will be relevant and attractive to shoppers. This *can* be really hit and miss. But what if we gave customers a crack at cross-selling?

Continue Reading:
User Generated Cross-Sells? Why Is Nobody Doing It? »

I discovered an interesting UK Shopping 2.0 site called the Imagini Gift Finder. It’s kind of like social wishlisting meets Myers-Briggs — you work through a series of “questions” and you get results based on your answers. But the twist is, you choose from a set of images what appeals to you most. The system uses your choices to determine your “Visual DNA” and present you with relevant gifts.

You can get suggestions for your own gifts and build a wishlist that you can send to your friends *hint.* Or, you can invite a “Valentine” to take the quiz and build a wishlist for you so you don’t have to obsess over whether your honey likes a burger with or without a bun.

Here are just a few of the questions and images. If you don’t like any of the pictures, you can click on a gray box to skip.

Continue Reading:
Imagini Helps You Find Gifts Using Visual DNA »

We’ve been talking much about social media marketing here at Get Elastic, blogging, podcasts, viral videos and so on. But what about Facebook applications? What kind of things can you build for this platform that relate to ecommerce? Is it worth it? Who’s doing what and are they successful? Today I’m reviewing 29 ecommerce Facebook applications by shopping engines, deals sites, social shopping sites and online retailers.

User stats are as of October 10 and are subject to change. A note about active users, when products appear on a Facebook profile, just because it’s not updated daily doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a branding impact or fulfill a place for users to express their style/product tastes. Metrics we unfortunately can’t measure are how many invited users add the application (conversion rate) and how many users have added and later removed them (attrition rate).

Continue Reading:
Facebook + Ecommerce = 29 Applications Reviewed »

What is social shopping? It’s essentially a mashup that resembles social bookmarking, social networking and comparison shopping in a blender. A bunch of flavors of social shopping websites have popped up as of late, creating a great opportunity for online retailers to engage in some low-cost word-of-mouth marketing.

We’ve hunted down a number of different sites that you can submit your retail products to, and provided a brief summary of each site’s features. Since you never know where a sale is going to come from, it’s worth it to get into as many of these sites as you can and track which bring success and which are just a hassle.

Social Shopping Bookmarking Sites (or “Social Wishlists”)

These sites allow you to bookmark, tag, share and even blog products you like. Some allow you to join groups or even earn revenue from your picks.

Here’s a tip: if you’re going to submit your own products – tag with reckless abandon. Browse popular tags for ideas (as they will be surfed often) and also more targeted, specific terms, to maximize your likelihood of being found using search boxes.

	Join groups, create wishlists, email products to friends, add product lists to your blog or MySpace, and easily submit products here.
	Add a bookmarklet to your browser and off you go. Search for products by category and user lists, add friends, join groups and comment on products and people. Kaboodle auto-creates product descriptions when you bookmark items.
	Wists (weblists - get it?) gives users a way to keep all their wishlists in one place, rather than in each individual e-store. The description copy and paste may seem tedious but gives you more control than Kaboodle’s autogenerated description. And if you want to encourage bookmarking, Wists’ got a chicklet. See Wists in action.
	In addition to the typical bookmark / add comments / join groups / add friends options, you can also “follow” your friends or random stranger style mavens a la Twitter. And they’ve included a social media 1.0 feature: a forum.
	Yet another bee-branded social shopping site … WhatsBuzzing is the Stumbleupon of social shopping. Users browse storefronts, rather than individual items to discover e-stores and get ideas before going comparison shopping. Tag storefronts, add to favorite list and add friends. You can’t submit your store, if you’re buzzworthy they’ll find you.
	Bookmark products, email to friends, and subscribe to RSS feeds of other users’ picks. Doesn’t look like you can add friends — yet. There’s 2 ways you can add your product: enter the name, URL, or UPC code of the item or add a browser icon and bookmark a product from it’s product page. And you can “Shopcast” by adding a badge or feed of your list to your blog. Kudos to the designers, the blog posts look really slick.
	Lacks the social features like adding a community, but you can tag your items. Unfortunately it’s attracting a lot of irrelevant spam that appears at the top of all product listings (with no images) and the design is nothing compared to other sites, nevertheless a site to submit products to.
	Pick products from MyPickList’s merchant network, earn commissions from a number of stores and share a slideshow of your pick list with a widget supported by a number of blogs and social networks. Add friends and message users. If you’re listed in Amazon, Buy.com or other participating merchants, you can get in on the action and recommend your own products.
	Social by virtue of being a wiki, add a product, subscribe to RSS feeds, tap items as “love it,” “want it” and “have it.”

Social Deals and Coupons Sites

	Find deals on specific items, browse posted coupon codes and special offers from Dealplumber’s database, or post your product or affiliate product coupons. “Free Stuff” and “Free Shipping” categories, too. Pipe your products here.
	Free listings for merchants, woot-woot! Add a button to your bookmarks toolbar or submit your deals here one by one. Join groups, tag, browse, and keep your peeps updated with Twitter tweets.
	Submit deals, rate, surf, repeat. You can also earn revenue when people click on AdSense around your posted deals. (Sounds like an invitation for click fraud…) This site is really in its infancy, with not many deals, categories or members, but a one to watch.
	Social dealmarking with community voting — best deals rise to the top. Deals come from sites like Dealnews, BensBargains, Woot and from registered users.
	Just like Dealcritic, but with much better organization/categories, and options to subscribe to RSS feeds for hot deals, all deals and freebies. Plus Dealspl.us runs giveaway contests. An added incentive to invite friends, if they win a prize, you win too.
	Like a deal search engine. Users submit deals and then vote on them, but the site lacks tags and categorization. Users must browse the “popular” list or use the search box and hope for the best. Posting a deal is easy.

Social Comparison Engines

Now for some gray-area social shopping sites. The following are comparison engines which have either social shopping features, or a free way of submitting your own products to them, and thus being worthy of honorable mention here for etailers looking to cast a broad net over sites that we believe are going to take off.

	A visual search engine that lets you zoom in on a detail of a product and see similar items based on colour, shape, pattern, price etc. Categories include watches, shoes, handbags, jewellery, clothing. Etailers can add individual products, or email to submit a feed or link. Helps if you have an affiliate program, you may pay per click or per sale, Like.com supports both models.
	This ain’t your Grandma’s online craft fair. Modern Etsy exlusively lists hand made products, with a whack of Web 2.0 goodies that makes Etsy so sticky — including the Geolocator and Shop by Color. Users can create their own lists in the Treasury. Merchants get a free username.etsy.com account for free, and can list products for $0.20 per quantity, with a 3.5% of sales fee. Listings live for 4 months.
	Crowdstorm is like MySpace, Digg and Shopping.com in a blender. You can build your social network, “Recommend” products (Digg-style voting system) and search and browse products like any comparison shopping engine. It’s easy to submit products, but here’s the catch — users will be directed to Amazon or Ebay to make a purchase. So this works best if you’re an etailer already using these channels.
	Sound like a place to unload your Redwings Bobblehead collection? Think again. Hawkee is a social network for tech afficianados where you’ll find user-posted coupons and deals, product reviews and code snippets in addition to comparison shopping. Hawkee uses feeds direct from retailers, not from other shopping engines so drop them a line for more info on getting listed.
	Fivelimes is an eco-friendly shopping community where you can find sustainable products and services. Browse by categories (no tags), shop locally or browse reviews. Submit a product URL you know about, or join the Vendor Program which works on a cost-per-click basis.
	Crawls the web picking up products from etailers on its own. Unfortunately some products are outdated. Really cool color search feature. Doesn’t accept merchant product feeds but you can add your e-store URL here. Or read more about getting listed.
	The social sister of comparison engine Buy.com, at Yub (Buy in reverse) you can shop for over 6 million products, receive cash-back discounts, and shop with your friends. Write reviews and earn commissions when users buy through you. The Meet People feature is tres MySpace. Another reason to get listed in the Buy.com marketplace.
	Yahoo! Answers approach to the purchase decision. (Run by Yahoo! Shopping, guess where product results come from). Hint: if you spot a “powwow” (thread) related to your e-store’s products, you can drop a link in there. Sell individual items Craigslist-style by starting a new pow-wow and uploading an image from Photobucket.
	Like Yub, offers members discounts, splitting their affiliate commissions with the buyer 50/50. Advertisers are ranked my how much discount they offer buyers. Works on a “Cost per Sale” model so advertisers can keep a fixed return on ad spend. Send Jellyfish and email to join the merchant program. And did I mention Smack Shopping - Jellyfish’s Deal or No Deal-style online Dutch auction? (Just check out the link for a great video explanation &/or listen to Smack Talk about Transparent Shopping - Get Elastic #30 from eTail West)
	Site looks great, but not the most intuitive site to figure out (what’s the “Download” for?). You can earn 25-50% affiliate commission on products “suggested” from the Usuggest merchant database. Tagline is “Shoppers Helping Shoppers” but may end up more like “affiliates selling to affiliates”…and we know affiliates will always buy from themselves. Needs a widget to post to blog to market outside of the community. Unfortunately no information on how to add your products to their network.

Definitely are interesting space to watch and we are all curious about how the social shoposphere will evolve, however more awareness among the general public is needed. So go sign up and tell ten friends!

Did we miss your favorite site? Something you want someone to build? What missing from social commerce site? What’s the real value? Drop us a comment to share your experiences with social shopping.

UPDATED AUGUST 6, 2007: