Ecommerce Browsing

Abstract

Context

ecommerce browsing: email (selection/curation), search, browsing

Purchase drivers

Why do you buy something?

• Offers: You become aware of a great offer and you buy mainly because of the price advantage. You would have not bought it if you'd had not stumbled upon that offer.
• Particular need: You know exactly what you need and you need to buy it immediately or within a certain close date (a Christmas present, a bag for your next trip, a costume for this weekends party).
• Ample need: You need to buy something but you you know only the category and are not in a hurry (new tires for your bike, a blender, a TV).

Discovery drivers

How do you buy something?

• Primary:
  • Email: you receive an email from an online vendor
  • Search: you know what you need and search for it (you normally start with a search engine to do a little price comparison; or you go to your top of mind seller for that category)
  • Browsing: you use the classic hierarchical category tree (mixed with search) to find and refine results.

• Secondary:
  • Recomendations: inline, email (retargeting)

Other topics to explore: Conversion drivers (When do you buy)

Idea Proposal

• • Base user case**: you are browsing for an "ample need" good. You have choosen it and are ready for checkout. You could buy items from another category if they were suggested to you (but not from the same category, which are the items that would appear in "recommendations"). Just being exposed

Examples:

• You are buying tires for your bike.
• You are buying a blender. You could also buy a knife and other kitchen complements.
• You are buying

• • Solution**:

The browsing experience is

To improve the browsing experience of the purchase process. There are "classic" problems and limitations with browsing which have hardly been overcomed or experimented with:

• You don't always know in which category is the product you are looking for
• The hierarchical classification made by the shop made not match with your mental model
• It's difficult to switch categories: you can't usually easily go to a sister category because of usability implications, and the cost of doing so is somewhat
• ...

References

• Social Media Lags Search, Email in E-commerce Conversions