Original Post 7.16.2008
I read a great article today from ecommerce times concerning the ecommerce world today. Makes me want to buy more stuff online…
There are five must-have features e-tailers should incorporate into their online businesses, according to Joe Chung, cofounder and CEO of Allurent: interactive merchandising, advanced shopping tools, rich media, advanced search and guided navigation, and social commerce. The Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass lives in a very curious world where, as she explains to Alice, “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
I think that sentence sums up the world of e-commerce with uncanny accuracy: No matter how hard we work to knock items off the priority list, there are always new ones popping right up to take their place.
The current economic recession is distressing, but it is also a perfect opportunity to seize the initiative and address the features and functionality that will define the third generation beyond the basic page-based shopping model that we’ve lived with for so long. As the Red Queen herself said, “If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast!”
There are some interesting sites mentioned leading form and functionality in this space for ecommerce: