TulipTools Internet Business Owners and Online Sellers Community

Quote:At a conceptual level, the new shopping applications are all rooted in the unmet needs and implementation barriers merchants wrestle with as they seek to better leverage the opportunity of the Internet. So the new applications and those under development blast through the infrastructure constraints of browsers, for example, to serve up a richer visual experience through the desktop. They free shoppers to tote images and product information with them as they travel the web. They segment personalized offers more finely and with speedier automation of that process.

Some of the most interesting new applications are still just in the realm of “why not.” For instance, Bridget Fahrland, executive creative director at Fry Inc., identifies one huge need driving development in e-commerce technology as the need for greater expediency. So she visualizes a future shopping application in which shoppers could text to buy from a web site. “Why not be on a site and be able to text to buy from the site with your cell phone? It would be so much easier,” she says.

Such an application might allow a customer to choose a product, color and size from a web site page, and all of that information could generate a specific text identifier number, she adds. “Your cell phone already has information about who you are and where you live built in, so you can save the step of entering all that. You’d just have to enter your credit card information,” she says...