Future Web ideas
This post was made Mar 12, 2009 by Jeff Noethen
When I say future, I’m thinking 2010 or 2011. I’ll leave the 2020 internet to someone else. However, I have 4 great ideas for web enhancements that you could probably do now.
Social Networking:
Websites will recognize your login and be able to tie it to your twitter and if you are a follower of said website the following tweet will be sent out: “eljefe29 is shopping on amazon.com”. I hope it would not get any more personal than that, but I think I would be fine with certain websites broadcasting that I am viewing them. Before you start hating on this idea, just remember, if you are a tweeter you probably already tweet about this anyway, so what’s the harm? If you are on friendfeed or etc. anytime you update something on a website like netFlix your friendfeed status updates anyway. So why not have the ‘big brands’ or etc, do this as well. As a side note, you should check with your analytics provider to see if they have any type of tracking metrics or measures for branding on social networks.
Cross channel / mobile web:
Say you are in a store and you find something that you want, but your birthday is coming soon, or maybe Christmas is right around the corner. Maybe you just don’t want to buy this item for yourself. You could snap a photo of said item with your phone, or maybe scan in the UPC number and the online site would then upload this into your wishlist. You could then email your wish list to your friends and family and make their shopping for you a lot easier. You could also do a reverse of a buy online pick up in store sort of thing… You could snap a photo of an item; upload it from your phone to the website; the website could give you the option to search for this item at another store; if there is a store near where the person that you want to send said item to, then you can buy the item and your friend/relative etc. could go pick it up. There are many variations of this!
Customer Service:
What if what was old, was new? Remember the paper clip helper’ for MS Office? What if you had a ‘paperclip character’ on your site… (maybe your logo or icon or mascot), that would pop up on site load and ask customer how they can assist them? Maybe it’s not that intrusive, but is smart enough to know when the user is having trouble… Let’s call this a CS widget so that it sounds a little more “PC”. Say you could tie in some of your analytics metrics, so that if the widget knew the average time on page was 20 seconds and at 30 seconds the widget pops up and asks if the customer needs assistance. Maybe your average product views per session is 12 and the customer views product number 13. Mr. Widget pops up with an onsite search box and suggests that the customer type in a product or brand name for what they are looking for. There are probably other metrics that you could tie in but this is a great starting point.
Retention:
This one is borderline futuristic as some sites are already doing this. What if you could take an iGoogle approach to your website and make your site customizable to the customer. The one constant thing I see in analytics is that there is not always a hands down specifically dominant path that 100% of your customers use. Maybe there is a large majority that follow your designated main path, but if you can do some pathing analysis and determine that a certain percent of your customers that follow the main path DO NOT convert, there is probably a different way that they would prefer to shop. Maybe there’s a problem with your suggested Categorization, or maybe the customer prefers to start with onsite search. If you could make your website, so that each area was a ‘widget’ or an app that the customer could move around or designate alternatives for, maybe this would help increase your orders and conversions. Maybe the customer could opt to type in your web address and land on a search box page similar to Google where they could type in a brand or a product or a service or etc. to begin their shopping experience.
This idea would also help give you ideas for future versions of your website and / or your landing page, etc.
Please let me know what you think about these ideas!
I see a great app for the iPhone: iWishlist — you photo the UPC it updates your wishlist. That could save a lot of time with wedding registries.
I agree with Carlos, I think that is a great idea for some kind of cell phone app. I have three teenagers and I know that I would personally invest in something like this.
I also love the “paperclip” from word idea. I don’t know how many sites I’ve been to where its is so difficult to navigate… or i just can’t seem to find what i’m looking for. I’d love to see something like the paperclip guy. GREAT idea for customer service!