If you're old enough to remember the experience pictured above, you know that it was once common to sit down and read a single printed news source.
What they wrote is what you knew. I didn't have the resources to get news from 5-10 other unique sources.
When print became obsolete, you probably accessed the same information sources online, reading and scrolling in much the same way.
Is the end. You most likely came to this article via a link elsewhere. You don't go to the Forbes homepage saying, “I'm going to read Forbes.” After you finish reading this article, you're likely to move on to another site or app. You're unlikely to read another article on Forbes.com.
Broadly speaking, the same thing is happening in retail. You previously promised to go to the store. Once online became available, people started shopping by visiting retailers' and brands' websites the same way they used to read news from a single source.
Now that is changing. When you shop online, you're more likely to find fashion products and discretionary items through product links. People are less likely than ever to shop online at a particular retailer or brand.
(If you're saying to yourself, “No, he's wrong. That's not the way I do it,” you might want to ask your kids or younger friends how they shop.)
Changing online navigation habits are a major challenge for retailers looking for ways to keep their online visitors coming back.
There are several ways to increase the appeal of your retailer or brand. One is price, and there are very few brands or retailers that consistently have the lowest prices.
The other thing is values. These are personal values, not economic values. When consumers identify with a brand’s defining values (sustainability, fair wages, local production, diversity, etc.), they are more likely to be drawn back to that brand, regardless of price.
But no system is perfect, and consumers tend to drop in and bounce back from links.
There are several reasons why the way we purchase products has become in the news.
One is that shopping on a single website is boring. Flat photos usually require a lot of scrolling to get your attention, and even then you can't touch or try them on.
Competition for attention from social media is the main reason consumers jump from place to place (just like news). Social media uses the world's most sophisticated technology to direct users to news and links to everyone's favorite nonsense. And now you can shop too. Link to your product, take a look at it, then go back and see what social media wants to show you next.
Why this is the biggest opportunity in retail today
Retailers' response to this challenge is to focus on personalization and artificial intelligence. This makes your website more relevant and appealing to returning visitors. But that's just the beginning of the solution to the problem of wayward consumers.
The real opportunity to drive consumers to retail sites remains untapped, but it's hiding in plain sight. It's a search. If a proper search function can be developed, anyone with it can take the consumer exactly where he wants to go, make his shopping online more interesting and enjoyable, and keep the consumer coming back for more. We'll be able to bring him back.
You might be thinking, “But GoogleGOOG dominates search.” If you've ever searched for fashion on Google, you know that it doesn't work very well. If you ask Google “buy the dress that Cate Blanchett wore to her Oscars ceremony last year,” you won't find anything close to what she wore (here).
Social media has focused on fashion search because its algorithms work well at attracting and retaining consumers. But a search feature that could answer the Cate Blanchett question would change the way we find and buy fashion online.
Developing that ability is a great opportunity. Google's global dominance in search lies in fashion and other discretionary products. Explorations and experiences available in-store are currently not available online. This is one of the big parts missing from online searches.
Imagine a fashion website that understands your colloquialisms and takes you right to what you want instead of endless scrolling.
Artificial intelligence is smart, but the fact that it takes time to develop shows how difficult the problem is. But it's coming because it has to come. There is a huge opportunity for those who create it, and the software and hardware processing to create it is now available.
With the proper search capabilities that artificial intelligence is now beginning to facilitate, consumers will visit search sites and find interesting fashion or any other consumer product using their normal language.
Anyone who creates the ability to understand human communication like a great personal shopper will become the Google of shopping. Consumers will return there again and again.
It's always been true in retail that those who control where consumers shop have the power to control profits and fashion success. Before the internet, it meant setting up shop in the right location and making sure it was user-friendly and attractive to passersby. In the online world, that means whoever makes it the easiest for consumers to find what they want wins.
The most successful companies in the fashion industry may end up being software companies. (If that sounds paradoxical, take a look at Amazon's third-party reseller business. Amazon doesn't sell you products or pay you for inventory. Amazon has been very successful in the fashion industry. We provide software and services that
This feature will eventually make its way to brick-and-mortar stores, making in-store searches much easier everywhere.
Thanks to search technology, retail has become like a newspaper. But as it evolves into the future, it will also determine how retailers can avoid the same outcome and adapt to the future.
follow me twitter Or LinkedIn.
