Back when eCommerce started few people had any idea how massive and central it would become to our lives. Meanwhile, the architecture behind e-commerce is stuck in the 90s.
When eCommerce sites were first designed, they were built to showcase product catalogs. At the time, that made perfect sense: it was a way to create limitless virtual shelf space. Today, if you Google search “retail website architecture” you’ll find image after image of products and product categories, reflecting the fact that eCommerce sites remain wedded to the catalog concept.
Of course, there have been many improvements in the online shopping experience—it’s faster, the images are better, and the check-out is easier. And as more data and tracking tools became available, retailers built shopper profiles based on clicks through these digital catalogs. Direct marketing, in turn, is also based on bringing the shopper to the virtual catalog.
People are living their lives online
In the interim, there’s been a parallel explosion of people living more and more of their lives online thanks to social media. Curated for You’s CEO Katy Aucoin notes that, “At the start of eCommerce, there was no knowledge that the internet would become social, a place where people are sharing and building relationships with their networks and with savvy brands.” And retailers have been paying the very steep price of remaining in an antiquated catalog mode: over the last decade, a staggering amount of money has been spent on trying to innovate the digital discovery experience on sites, mobile apps, and through direct marketing—without addressing the root cause of the problem — focusing on products and not consumers. That’s because software solutions designed for retailers are built around the catalog concept. So retailers are still trying to answer the question of how to effectively engage with shoppers and lower bounce rates.
More than products — it’s about life outside the website
“Retailers are stuck in what I call the dimensionless data problem,” Aucoin says. “Almost all of the data retailers have access to pertains to products. In order to create a compelling, bespoke experience for the shopper, the site needs to be about much more than just the product—you have to look at the consumer’s life outside of the website. But without changing the architecture, retailers will only be able to talk about products.”
Curated for You shifts the experience from products to people
That’s where CFY can help. CFY is leading a paradigm shift away from catalog thinking and towards interacting with the shopper as a holistic, 360-degree person whose purchases fit into their lifestyle and values. In the 90s, products were king. Now, people should be at the center of how we think about and build our platforms.
“With the CFY’s lifestyle data API,” Aucoin notes, “shoppers can engage with the site in a completely customized way: navigating, searching, and receiving direct marketing messages that pertain to the specific things in their life they are shopping for.”
CFY empowers retailers to connect with and retain their shoppers in an authentic way: The design is built to engage with shoppers as people, not as data generated by product purchases from a catalog.
As eCommerce approaches its third decade, powerfully innovative tools for retailers are long overdue. CFY’s novel technology offers a way to break free from outdated catalog thinking, and in the process creates a guided shopping experience that is not only far more successful for retailers, but also considerably more enjoyable for shoppers.
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