The simple fact is that lifestyle imagery is engaging and fun: just look at the stack of Williams-Sonoma or Patagonia catalogs on the average consumer’s coffee table. However, turning that imagery into something web-ready by adding copy takes too much time and specialized resources (designers) and might even detract from the imagery itself. This is disappointing because as in the offline world, vivid imagery is engaging and can both build brand and increase the chance a customer will buy that item.

Fluid Experience to the rescue…

The shoppable lifestyle imagery component of Fluid Experience allows business users to add helpful tooltips to images so your customers can find what they want more quickly. The functionality is templatized so you can preconfigure brand appropriate fonts, colors, styles, etc. allowing your designers to rest easy knowing business-types won’t meddle with their design. Once the banner is created, it can be previewed and then deployed to your site right from the Fluid Retail admin tools allowing you to push new banners live in less than five minutes.

What’s more, you can omit tooltips and add arbitrary links to various calls-to-action throughout the banner. Finally, you can place multiple banners into a merchandiser which allows users to navigate through elegant cross-fading or scrolling.

Satisfy your user’s need for interactivity and make better use of your brand imagery. Contact support@fluidretail.com to learn more about shoppable lifestyle imagery today.

To save your customers from back button overload, you can use Fluid Experience to effortlessly display recently viewed products. With Fluid Experience, adding a recently viewed merchandiser takes minimal IT setup and maintenance. It allows you to easily store and retrieve a user’s recently viewed items. Each time a user visits a product detail page, Fluid Experience will store the product in a cookie. Then, on the next page load, the product will display in a Fluid Merchandiser. The merchandiser that displays the recently viewed items is template-based. So, it can be easily customized to match the look and feel of the rest of your site. It also allows for a wide variety of options for presenting recently viewed products. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

Timberland UK

Timberland keeps the recently viewed merchandiser in the navigational panel through the site. So, regardless if customers are on a product detail, category or search page, they can always see their recently viewed products. Also, by simply clicking on the product image in the recently viewed merchandiser, the customer is taken to that product’s detail page where they can easily add it to their shopping cart.

Another great example is on the Fine Stationary site:

Here, Fine Stationary uses a merchandiser with a few added features. The 2 buttons at the bottom of the merchandiser allow the user to either go directly to the product detail page of a recently viewed product or to see a list of all the products they’ve viewed so far. The “View All” button is extremely helpful in this case. It allows the user to see all the products they have viewed next to each other, making it easy to compare products.

For more information on how to add a recently viewed merchandiser to your site contact support@fluidretail.com

We’ve brought Amy on because gone are the days where retailers can rigidly control virtually every aspect of their online presence and shopping experience. Blogs and customer reviews mean consumers have a voice in the conversation. Content is increasingly portable and flexible. Conversion funnels begin before consumers get to your site and social networks allow consumers unprecedented influence over what friends and strangers are buying online and in stores. This complex landscape requires shopping and brand experiences that are thoughtful, flexible and strategic.

It is Amy’s job to help our clients plot a path through this evolving landscape, particularly in social media, and to make sure everything Fluid deploys is on target from both a quantitative business and brand perspective.

Welcome, Amy.

1. If you’re getting bad reviews on a product you probably shouldn’t be selling it. [Session: Terry Lundgren, CEO, Macy's]

2. Starbucks is the McDonald’s of the middle class. And McDonald’s is owning this by competing up. Their take? 4 bucks for coffee is dumb. [Session: Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester]

3. Everyone else is in = why 50% of retailers are in social media. 34% see a + biz impact. Note: This is social bc it’s worth talking about. [Session: Sucharita Mulpuru, Forrester]

4. Walking through the Expo Hall wearing a non-retailer pass is like walking into a singles bar wearing a denim vest and waving a red flag.

5. How does Cash For Clunkers impact your biz? With thrift = pride how do we provide a marketplace to monetize? Trading up meet trading down.

6. Up = Private label product sales 40%, coupon redemption 198%, teeth whitener 28%, sleep aids 22%. Sleep aided shiny smiles meet value seekers. [Session: Ellen Davis, Drugstore.com CEO]

7. woot!: The product sells itself so have fun. “We want Wiis” to sell Playstations. Product sold out in 16 min. Part Onion, part HSN. Sweet. [Session: Matt Rutledge, CEO, woot!]

8. Gilt: Invite only and a twist on luxury “liquidation” = VIP access to high fashion finds. In 2 years revenue = $150M. Genius. [Session: Susan Lyne, CEO, The Gilt Groupe]

9. Scared about social media? Not likely. You’re probably scared about your products or your company. When all else fails just ask. [Session: Twitter & Social Media All-Stars]

10. Moms and teens need to shop together but don’t want to. Our challenge: How can tech help? (And yes teens now get paid to do digital chores) [Session: Kelly Mooney, President/CEO, Resource Interactive]

Cheers (and very nice to meet you all),
Amy

1. Inside Network and Serious Business released a report projecting U.S. virtual goods to hit $1B this year. It’s a twist on nothing for something driven by Facebook apps like Farmville - which gained a mind bending 18M users in the last month to hit 51M monthly uniques.

Or the goods can be as simple as a $1 virtual birthday gift. Adding $1 seems to make it mean more than when it’s free.

[From an ecommerce perspective: What are you selling that people would want in a virtual form? Or where could we be selling it?]

2. Seth Godin proposed that CraigsList should implement a dollar fee for all postings. The idea being that the transaction makes the poster accountable. Lose the anonymity and drop the scamming, dodgey, dirtbags (um my words not his). I love this idea. As Wired reemphasized in August , Craig doesn’t want the money. So give it to a different non-profit every day.

Craigslist has equated free with anonymity, backed by value if you trust the specific sellers you encounter. The $1 proposal equates an ecommerce transaction with trust and ability to trace. Infusing ecommerce adds the human element to keep us all honest.

So is this the end of free? Not exactly. Free can still be an essential introduction, a surprise and delight element and a try before you buy tactic.

My two cents? These ideas challenge us to consider whether a dollar can add value - to be confident enough to even consider whether what we may give away for free is worth something more.

My left over $.98 (plus a penny I just picked up) is going to iTunes.

Cheers,
Amy

Facebook’s decision to split the wall into Live Feed and News Feed is having an impact. Vitrue determined that on average there are 57% less interactions and 30% less clicks on wall posts.

According to Inside Facebook, the algorithm takes into account:

- How many people comment on and like content from Pages you fan
- Which Pages you visit frequently
- Which Pages you interact with frequently

For those with more than 250 friends, Facebook pulls a sample of friends and connections to determine this data. Likely there is even more happening behind the scenes.

What does this mean? It means that the content we create for brands still has to be worth talking about. Same as always. But now, if it’s not, it has even less chance of seeing the light of day.

With this move the earned placement model and optimization of the search engine world finds new force on Facebook. Although I miss the pictures displayed by algorithm that Facebook has removed from the right column, I’m a fan.

Cheers, Amy

This resonates. Fluid’s philosophy on designing customer experience is that sometimes it’s good to go outside.

When you do, stop by REI’s Seattle flagship store in Seattle. A 3-story high climbing wall dominates the entry. There’s a rain room, a bike trail, a hiking boot test course, and a JanSport play treehouse swarming with marauding children. The interior design and finish details are rustic and rough-hewn, evoking a carefully architected outdoors experience.

Virgin Megastore in Hollywood has 100+ interactive kiosks that offer as much entertainment value as they do access to inventory. And it’s a great place to see bands. And, of course, there’s always Apple. You get the idea.

The point: these elements of the in-store experience are not about thrusting product at the consumer at every opportunity.

Rather, the objective is to create an “emotional moment” with the customer — immersive, uniquely branded and entertaining. Experiences designed to meaningfully connect with the customer. And, by doing so, foster a deeper relationship with the brand, a gratifying experience, and eventually more sales.

Most online retail sites aren’t especially fun. They are usable, clean and bright. Super functional, searchable, and safe. But compared with real-world shopping, they are sterile. Today’s e-commerce sites are like retail spaces 25 years ago: white boxes, bad lighting, uninspired fixtures. Products are well organized and findable but there’s not much retail therapy happening.

The evolution of the in-store experience will absolutely be echoed in the digital realm in one form or another and then taken further than it can be in the physical world. It is inevitable. The online store will soon be the ultimate “full price” flagship, a store experience fueled by interactivity and media, free from the constraints of square footage and physics.

Proof points: Fluid’s recent launches for Vera Wang Princess and Craftsman Customizable Tool Storage

Whether or not brands are ready to embrace this point of view, consumers are demanding it.