You’re on your way to the cash desk and you spy a colourful display of those little thingamajigs that promise to make your life easier. So you pop one in your cart and, $37.99 plus GST later, you scold yourself for spending more than you’d intended. You make a mental note to do more shopping on the Net, where you have more control over the process, and where you won’t be so tempted to make those rash, last-minute purchases.
Dream on. For if Paul Romanchuk has his way, impulse buying – that mainstay of the retail trade – will soon be as much a part of the online shopping environment as it is in the bricks-and-mortar world.
Romanchuk, a former investment banker and the new owner of online shopping mall Norstar (www.norstarmall.ca), says he plans to make the online experience more three-dimensional in order to simulate window-shopping – and thereby boost impulse sales.
Norstar, which represents more than 100 merchants, including Indigo, La Senza, Future Shop, IBM, Roots and Delta Hotels & Resorts, uses 3-D technology to draw the customer’s attention to specific goods on offer. The idea is to simulate browsing.
‘It’s the only type of tool where we can create impulse buying (online),’ says Romanchuk, who also happens to be CEO of Richmond Hill, Ont.-based junior mining company Sikaman Gold Resources.
Visitors to the Norstar mall are made to feel as if they are walking down aisles perusing the goods. Marketers can also set up certain ‘trip wires’ that send out appropriate messages – and these can go beyond what would normally occur in a regular mall. For example, if the user is browsing a certain section of the Indigo store in Norstar, a book on the shelf may open and close to attract the attention of the browser.
Or, if you’re in a music store like HMV and you walk by a particular section, you can hear a voiceover promoting the latest release, says Romanchuk.
Retailers don’t have to rebuild their sites but can instead rely on an intermediate 3-D site that links to their regular site. The company is also working on a rewards program for frequent shoppers and plans to introduce the Interac direct payment system online in the next six months in order to better capture the teenage market, says Romanchuk.
Paul Lypaczewski, senior vice-president of business and product development for Mississauga, Ont.-based Cyberworld, which developed the 3-D software, says that adding 3-D capabilities online provides a sense of place to a site that is difficult to convey through a flat, two-dimensional environment. He says this is essential for branding since so many retailers are identified by their space. Take Toys ‘R’ Us, for example.
‘If you were teleported to the middle of a Toys ‘R’ Us store, you’d know you were there,’ says Lypaczewski. ‘There’s a very distinct physical brand.’ However, he says, if you visit the toy giant’s Web site, you’d be hard-pressed to know whether you’re in Toys ‘R’ Us or a competitor’s site. ‘That sense of place is not there.’
That ‘sense of place’ may be easier to convey for a company that already has a distinct physical brand, such as Club Monaco, but Lypaczewski says it can be created for one that lacks that identity as well. The key is to make a site as engaging as possible. And that’s where the 3-D element comes into play.
As it stands now, online shopping is done for two reasons, according to Lypaczewski – convenience and cost savings. While both are engaging reasons, adding another reason – pleasure – will expand the marketplace significantly.
‘We want to bring in those people who aren’t the hunters, but the browsers,’ he says.
Also in this report:
– Technology tools make life easier: Some handy-dandy devices you won’t be able to live without p.D10
– E-mail marketing: proceed with caution: If it becomes de rigeur, response rates will begin to erode, warns expert p.D14
– New Web site gets to Roots of e-commerce p.D15
– CRM the glue that connects marketing, sales: Being earmarked as the key to revenue enhancement, customer retention p.D16
– It’s time to redefine online relationships p.D18
