Online Retail: Are We Buying or Shopping?

Jim Sterne and I had our almost monthly lunch last week and he commented that a major problem with on-line retailing is that it is mostly about buying rather than shopping. Interesting … In the real world when you go out to buy a gift you either know what you want and buy it or you browse, looking for that particular gift that will fit the occasion and the person (unlike a certain group of people I know who bought their grandmother an electric chainsaw for her birthday and demoed it by slicing her kitchens chairs in half … that is, of course, another story). On-line things are similar when you know what you want. You find a supplier, find the gift you had in mind, add it to your cart, and virtually head for the checkout. It is when you don’t know what you want that things aren’t so smooth. The problem is that the on-line shops I’ve browsed have been driven by language rather than vision. This is a problem as the process of shopping in the real world primarily involves sight, touch, and smell with sound and text coming in as poor seconds. Even on Web sites where pictures are used the organization of the site usually reflects some kind of descriptive hierarchy so there’s a lack of “flow” — sliding from one display to the next — that makes Web browsing and real world browsing are two very different things. Can on-line shopping be achieved? I think it can but it still won’t be like real world shopping — without touch and smell there’s really no comparison — the experience can’t engage you the a visceral, emotional manner that, for example, a Christmas display in a department store can (it is things like the lighting, the sounds, and the smells that engage your attention so effectively). To really make on-line shopping work requires rethinking how products are presented, how they are juxtaposed, and how rich the detail can be made to make up for the sensory void that exists. This requires rich media and slick delivery such that the user feels entertained and involved. Without Web sites developing the tools and vocabulary to support that kind of user engagement, on-line retail will remain nothing more than a simple buying process. Thanks for lunch, Jim!