The truth is, despite the success of e-commerce retail and services, many people still prefer to shop in real stores so they can feel, touch, and see the goods.
The online shopping experience has until recently been limited to online catalogs with pretty pictures and a cumbersome check-out procedure euphemistically called a “shopping cart.” There’s very little meaningful interactivity in most online retail shopping. Less than 20% of the people who visit even the best Web sites buy something, while most Web sites find less than 5% buy anything.
Arpund 60% of shopping carts are abandoned before purchase. Over 50% of those who visit but do not buy say they cannot see or touch the prod-uct as the main reason.
If ordinary physical retail stores performed this badly they would not call the United States a
“consumer economy” and Macy’s and Wal-Mart would go broke. Looked at another way: if shopping cart abandonment went to zero and everyone who visited a Web site bought something, it is likely that retail e-commerce would double to over $300 billion a year. That’s the upside.
The days of static HTML pages are hopefully coming to an end, and the shopping experience made more virtual, highly interactive and enjoyable through the use of a set of techniques called AJAX. You can see these new techniques most clearly in mapping services such as Google Maps, MapQuest, and Yahoo Maps. Once the map is drawn on the screen, you can grab the map to move it in any direction without causing the entire HTML page to reload. On the retail products side, you can see AJAX at work in product configura-tors that allow you to grab the product with your mouse, and rotate it so you can see the product
from different angles, all without re-loading the HTML Web page. For instance, at Timberland.com, you can build a custom boot with colors, initials, embroidery, and designs all in real-time, without interruption. Many automo-bile Web sites use these same techniques.
Most Web sites today still work on the standard Web model: a client computer asks for a Web page, and a Web server delivers the page.
This occurs every time you press a Continue or Search button. Today’s highly graphical Web pages often contain several hundred kilobytes of data. But even if you have entered only a few lines of information containing a few hundred bytes of data in the traditional Web client/server model, all the processing is done on a remote server com-puter, and the client is not much more than a key-board, screen, and interface. With this traditional model, entire Web pages of information are transferred across the Web, creating delays for the user and hogging bandwidth on the Web.
But there is a different way to create Web pages. Using “AJAX” (for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, also sometimes just called
“rich Internet applications” or RIA), the client and server work in the background to transfer information immediately as the user enters it, and the server responds immediately, all without the user being aware of the transfer. The result is a smooth, seamless, seemingly continuous user experience. How does RIA work? There are several ways of building rich Internet applica-tions, but they all involve downloading a small program to the client. AJAX and RIA use existing tools to improve the user experience. One method is to download a small JavaScript program to a client computer that has a Java-enabled browser.
JavaScript was one of the first client-side 2009930990
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SOURCES: "The Business Benefits of Developing Applications in AJAX," by Andre Charland, UIresourcecenter.com, 2008; "Shopping Cart Abandon-ment Rises," eMarketer, Inc., May 29, 2008; "Making Web 2.0 Usable: Ajax Case Study," Molecular Inc. 2007; ; “Ajax Builds a Better Way to Find Ocean Car-rier Timetables,” by Heather Havenstein,Computerworld, March 9, 2007; “E-commerce: AJAX, Flash Make Websites More Engaging,” by Meredith Levinson, CIO Magazine, March 1, 2006.
languages and technologies with the ability to run a computer program delivered over the Web.
This small program carries on a background conversation with the server, retrieving only the information the user needs at whatever interval the application program requires. This method requires that the JavaScript program be capable of running on all target client computers, which may be using any one of several different browsers, and which may or may not be Java-enabled.
A different method is supported by Adobe’s Flash plug-in, which nearly 98% of U.S. client computers are currently using. In this method, a Flash program is downloaded to the client. This program runs within the Flash Player installed in most browsers. Flash provides a nearly universal client-side solution.
Whatever method is chosen, the results at consumer Web sites are encouraging. Tests at
TJMaxx.com and HomeGoods.com showed that about 50% more customers completed a one-page, AJAX-enabled shopping cart (which combined checkout, billing, and shipping pages) compared to a multiple-page shopping cart used earlier. TravelClicks, an iHotelier unit that sells hotel reservation systems to other hotels, licenses a reservation program built using Adobe’s Flex program (a program specifically designed by Adobe to create RIAs). On the roughly 2,000 hotel sites using iHotelier, customers now can see instantly the impact of changing rooms, or changing dates, without loading new pages.
As AJAX applications spread, the original vision of the Web as a highly interactive medium—as opposed to a slow page-turner—will become a reality. And hopefully, shopping carts will not become places where transactions go to die, but instead the last stop for a pleasing customer shopping journey.
ActiveX and VBScript
Microsoft—not to be outdone by Sun Microsystems and Netscape—invented the ActiveX programming language to compete with Java and VBScript to compete with JavaScript. When a browser receives an HTML page with an ActiveX control (compa-rable to a Java applet), the browser simply executes the program. Unlike Java, however, ActiveX has full access to all the client’s resources—printers, networks, and hard drives. VBScript performs in the same way as JavaScript. Of course, ActiveX and VBScript work only if you are using Internet Explorer. Otherwise, that part of the screen is blank.
In general, given the conflicting standards for Java, ActiveX, and VBScript and the diversity of user client computers, many e-commerce sites choose to steer clear of these tools. CGI scripts, JSP, and JavaScript are the leading tools for providing active, dynamic content.
ColdFusion
ColdFusion is an integrated server-side environment for developing interactive Web applications. Originally developed by Macromedia and now offered by Adobe, ColdFusion combines an intuitive tag-based scripting language and a tag-based server
ActiveX
ColdFusion offers a powerful set of visual design, programming, debugging, and deployment tools.
PERSONALIZATION TOOLS
You will definitely want to know how to treat each customer on an individual basis and emulate a traditional face-to-face marketplace. Personalization (the ability to treat people based on their personal qualities and prior history with your site) and customization (the ability to change the product to better fit the needs of the customer) are two key elements of e-commerce that potentially can make it nearly as powerful as a traditional marketplace, and perhaps even more powerful than direct mail or shopping at an anonymous suburban shopping mall. Speaking directly to the customer on a one-to-one basis, and even adjusting the product to the customer is quite difficult in the usual type of mass marketing, one-size-fits-all commercial transaction that characterizes much of contemporary commerce.
There are a number of methods for achieving personalization and customization.
For instance, you could personalize Web content if you knew the personal background of the visitor. You could also analyze the pattern of clicks and sites visited for every customer who enters your site. We discuss these methods in later chapters on marketing. The primary method for achieving personalization and customization is through the placement of cookie files on the user’s client computer. As we discussed in Chapter 3, a cookie is a small text file placed on the user’s client computer that can contain any kind of information about the customer, such as customer ID, campaign ID, or purchases at the site. And then, when the user returns to the site, or indeed goes further into your site, the customer’s prior history can be accessed from a database. Information gathered on prior visits can then be used to personalize the visit and customize the product.
For instance, when a user returns to a site, you can read the cookie to find a customer ID, look the ID up in a database of names, and greet the customer (“Hello Mary! Glad to have you return!”). You could also have stored a record of prior purchases, and then recommend a related product (“How about the wrench tool box now that you have purchased the wrenches?”). And you could think about customiz-ing the product (“You’ve shown an interest in the elementary traincustomiz-ing programs for Word. We have a special “How to Study” program for beginners in Office software.
Would you like to see a sample copy online?”).
We further describe the use of cookies and their effectiveness in achieving a one-to-one relationship with the customer in Chapter 8.
THE INFORMATION POLICY SET
In developing an e-commerce site, you will also need to focus on the set of informa-tion policies that will govern the site. You will need to develop a privacy policy—a set of public statements declaring to your customers how you treat their personal information that you gather on the site. You also will need to establish accessibility rules—a set of design objectives that ensure disabled users can effectively access your site. There are more than 50 million Americans who are disabled and require special access routes to buildings as well as computer systems (see Insight on Society:
Designing Accessibility in Web 2.0). E-commerce information policies are described in privacy policy
a set of public statements declaring to your customers how you treat their personal information that you gather on the site
accessibility rules
O t h e r E - c o m m e r c e S i t e T o o l s 243 others receiving federal money to make electronic and information technology services accessible to people with disabilities. Known as Section 508, this legislation requires Web sites of federally funded organizations to be accessible to users who are blind, deaf, blind and deaf, or unable to use a mouse. However, the legislation applies only to U.S. agencies, government contractors, and others receiving federal money, not to the broader e-commerce environment.
In one of the first law suits seeking to enforce Section 508 for Internet services, Access Now Inc., an advocacy group for the disabled, sued Southwest Airlines in 2001 on behalf of more than 50 million disabled Americans for operating a Web site that was inaccessible to the disabled, on the grounds that this violated of the 1990 Americans with Disability Act (ADA). In Novem-ber 2002, a Federal District Court in Florida, in one of the first court decisions on the applicabil-ity of the ADA to Web sites, ruled that ADA applies only to physical spaces, not virtual spaces.
However, the judge noted in a footnote that she was surprised that a customer-oriented firm like Southwest Airlines did not “employ all available technologies to expand accessibility to its Web site for visually impaired customers who would be an added source of revenue.”
Since this early decision however, both the interpretation of the law and public sentiment have resulted in many well-known Web sites conforming to the spirit of Section 508, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes under threat from advocacy groups. For instance, RadioShack, Amazon, Ramada, and Priceline
have entered into agreements with the American Council for the Blind, and the American Foundation for the Blind. Meanwhile, the National Federation of the Blind brought a class-action suit against Target for failing to make its site accessible for the blind. They claimed that blind people could not use Target’s shopping cart because it required use of a mouse, used inaccessible image maps and graphics, and lacked compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphics that allows screen reading software to vocalize a description of the image. Target claimed the ADA did not apply to Web sites.
In September 2006, a federal district court ruled that ADA did indeed apply to Web sites.
The court held “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, or privileges is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability in providing enjoyment of those goods and services.” The court thus rejected Target’s argument that only its physical store locations were covered by the civil rights laws, ruling instead that all services provided by Target, including its Web site, must be accessible to persons with disabilities. In October 2007, the court granted class-action status to the lawsuit.
In August 2008, Target and the NFB settled the suit. Target made no admission or concession that its Web site violated the ADA, but agreed to bring it into compliance with certain online assis-tive technology guidelines by February 28, 2009, and to have the NFB certify that it is compliant with those guidelines. In addition, Target agree to pay damages of $6 million. Many accessibility advocates expressed disappointment that the