Tag: ecommerce

Google Starts Surfacing Buyable “Similar Items” In Image Search Results

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google has quietly rolled out a new “Similar Items“ feature within Google Image Search on both the mobile web as well as Android‘s Google app, which uses machine learning to surface similar looking products matching what users are looking for. So far, this is limited to fashion and lifestyle products, such as sunglasses, handbags, or shoes, but Google says it will expand in the coming months to cover other apparel and home & garden categories. The feature will not only recognize what the objects in the image are, down to their brand and model but also find out about their price and availability. The feature also includes links to buy those similar-looking items on ecommerce sites.

What Brands Need To Do
This is an interesting play on Google’s part to build out its shopping-related features and explore how computer vision may help it breath new life into its search ads. This new feature revitalizes image search as a viable product discovery channel that brands will need to pay attention to. As users can also search by images, this can easily become a way for consumers to snap a picture of a physical product and quickly find similar items to buy online. While this feature currently runs on machine learning algorithms and is not monetized in any way, it is not hard to imagine how this could easily become a new ad product where online retailers selling the same items can bid to appear in the front end of the carousel.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Amazon Invites Social Influencers To Curate Collections And Earn Money

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon has launched a new initiative that aims to entice more social influencers to plug for sales on its platform. Similar to the existing Amazon Affiliate program, which allows anyone to sign up to create links and shopping ads for their own website or blog to get a referral cut of the sales, this new Amazon Influencer Program exclusively offers social influencers a chance to curate product collections on Amazon.com and generate income through affiliate sales. This makes for a more browseable shopping experience and let the influencers recommend a set of products to their fans at once.

What Brands Need To Do
With Amazon dominating online sales in the US, some brands and manufacturers have forgone e-commerce on their sites entirely, opting instead for sales and fulfillment operations managed by Amazon. This new program enables the ecommerce giant to leverage social influencers’ popularity to facilitate product discovery.

At a time when influencer marketing is becoming an essential business strategy for many marketers to reach new audiences and raise brand awareness, this is undoubtedly a smart move for Amazon to stay competitive in the ecommerce arena. More brands, especially fashion and CPG brands, should consider similar initiatives so as to leverage the personalized and authentic content created by influencers to garner social buzz and encourage customer loyalty.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Chatbot Offers Discounts On Prom Tuxedo Rentals Based On Grades

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Black Tux, a startup specializing in online tuxedo and suit rentals, has created a chatbot that hands out discounts based on school grades. Available on Facebook Messenger, the Suit Up Bot “uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) via the Tesseract OCR engine” to scan the report cards that customers uploaded and authenticate them for potential discounts. (In our test, the bot couldn’t recognize the random report card we found online but proceeded to offer up a code for $20 off at The Black Tux’s website.)

What Brands Need To Do
This new chatbot is a fun example of designing ecommerce chatbots. Inspired by the nostalgia of receiving rewards for good grades, the discount scheme fits well with the brand’s young adults-centric customer demo. As consumers continue to embrace messaging apps and chatbot services, brands need to consider developing useful bots with distinct features and personalities to reach customers on the popular messaging apps they’re already using.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building chatbots to reach consumers on messaging interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

Source: US Weekly

Header image courtesy of The Black Tux

Amazon Plans More Brick-And-Mortar Stores To Sell Electronics And Furniture

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
As reported by the New York Times, Amazon is “exploring” the possibility of opening more tech-powered brick-and-mortar stores to sell furniture, home appliances, and consumer electronics. Augmented reality-powered tools will be installed in the furniture store for a virtual preview, whereas the planned electronics store that would be similar to the concept of Apple Store, but with a “heavy emphasis” on hardware and services like Echo speakers and Prime Video.

Amazon has already opened five physical bookstores across the country, with more planned to open later this year, including one in Manhattan. In addition, the ecommerce giant is also nearing the opening of its cashier-less grocery store concept of Amazon Go.

What Brands Need To Do
Make no mistake, Amazon is determined to make major inroads into the brick-and-mortar retail market after dominating the ecommerce market for years, and it has all the customer data and retail technologies to back it up. This imminent grand entry should sound the alarm for all retailers and CPG brands who rely on traditional retail distributions, who should have started preparing to compete with Amazon in the offline world yesterday. Walmart, for example, announced the launch of a tech incubator focused on virtual reality and artificial intelligence to boost its retail smarts. More retailers need to start equipping themselves with new technologies in order to deliver a digitally enhanced retail experience and fight off Amazon’s advances.

Source: New York Times

Amazon Extends Alexa Voice Shopping To Include Prime Now Deliveries

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon Prime members can ask Alexa to get their groceries delivered within hours, thanks to the latest expansion of the voice assistant’s shopping capabilities. By integrating Prime Now programs into Alexa, Amazon is pushing the envelope on Alexa’s ecommerce capabilities and make it more deeply ingrained in Prime members’ daily lives. Beyond grocery products, Alexa can also order fast deliveries for smaller items such as video games from local stores. Some cities, such as Seattle, Columbus, and Cincinnati, will even get booze delivery via Alexa.

What Brands Need To Do
As Amazon continues to improve Alexa’s capabilities and integrate it with existing services, users will likely get more comfortable with voice shopping, thus presenting a new dilemma for brands in reaching customers via a voice-based conversational interface like Alexa. Short of partnering with Amazon to put your products atop the voice search results, which Amazon has yet to start doing, a good solution is for brands to develop their own Alexa skills. For example, beer giant Anheuser-Busch recently launched an Alexa skill that guides users through various workout routines designed to burn off the calories of a beer, which is a cool way to establish a brand presence on Alexa devices while providing extra value to customers.

According to a report from analytics firm VoiceLabs, about 33 million voice-first devices will be in circulation by the end of 2017. Therefore, It is up to brands to start working with developers to figure out their brand voice and incorporate conversational tools into their marketing efforts.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The “Miller Time” Alexa Skill we developed is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

 

Soylent Creates Conversational Virtual Assistant For Its Online Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Meal-in-a-bottle substitute maker Soylent has created a virtual assistant named Trish for its online shop to guide customers through the purchase process. Instead of using natural language input, Trish offers a menu of topics and answers that customers can click through to learn more about Soylent and its different product flavors. Once they select a flavor they like, Trish will prompt customers with a question of how many bottles they’d like to purchase and redirect them to the shopping cart for checkout.

What Brands Need To Do
Despite being a fairly low-tech version of a chatbot, Soylent’s new virtual shop keeper adds a conversational touch to the process of product discovery and site navigation of its online store. The addition of this conversational layer fosters a kind of user-friendliness that separates the customer experience from other online shopping experiences, where customers are bombarded with tons of options to choose from and left to their own devices. More brands, especially those that sells to customers directly online, need to evaluate their online customer experience and consider adopting conversational interfaces to guide customers with a simpler, more intuitive experience.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Soylent

Pizza Hut Created A Pair Of Connected Sneakers That You Can Order Pizza With

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pizza hut has taken the one-click ordering concept to new territories with a pair of bluetooth-enabled sneakers that you can order pizza from. Dubbed Pie Tops, the shoe essentially has an Amazon Dash-like button hidden on the tongue, which people can click to initiate the default order that they have configured with their Pizza Hut mobile app.

What Brands Need To Do
While this is clearly a marketing stunt, Pizza Hut’s pizza-ordering sneakers demonstrate how IoT technologies have made it possible to expand customer touchpoint beyond screens. It points to a future where billions of connected devices, be it your home appliances or the public amenities, will become capable of such ecommerce features. In fact, Visa has already struck a partnership with IBM to fast track the development of the so-called “IoT commerce,” i.e. the kind of automated digital transactions initiated by connected devices according to preset, contextual triggers. For brands, this means it is time to start considering developing an IoT strategy and figure out how connected devices can expand your sales or distribution channel.

 

Source: Engadget

Header image courtesy of Pizza Hut’s YouTube

Viber Partners With Macy’s And Rakuten To Bring Shopping Into Chat App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Messaging app Viber, which enjoys 260 million monthly active users worldwide, announced the launch of a new in-chat Instant Shopping feature that will integrate ecommerce features directly into the app. The new feature will enable Viber users to search for and share items without leaving the chat window, though the chat app has yet to integrate a payment solution so shoppers will be directed to the third-party retailer to complete the purchase.

The company says it has forged partnerships with two major retailers at launch – Macy’s and Rakuten.com, the ecommerce site formerly known as Buy.com was acquired by Japanese tech titan Rakuten in 2010, who also acquired Viber in 2014. The new feature will become available in the U.S. on March 6 in beta and Viber plans to roll out the feature globally throughout 2017.

What Brands Need To Do
Conversational commerce has been gaining traction in the U.S. lately thanks to Amazon Alexa’s ecommerce integrations and Facebook’s continuous efforts to make Messenger retail-friendly. As the big tech companies continue to explore the ecommerce potential in conversational contexts to cater to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction, brands and retailers need to take note and start experimenting with conversational commerce in order to stay ahead of the digital curve.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational experience supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data. If you’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

1-800 Flowers Tests Concierge Chatbot Powered By IBM’s Watson

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
1-800 Flowers has jumped into the world of conversational commerce with a concierge service that recommends flowers based on user input. Dubbed “Gwyn,” which stands for “gifts when you need,” the service is powered by IBM’s Watson cloud computing services, which allows it to understand natural languages and respond accordingly.

The e-retailer first started testing Gwyn last May with a limited beta test, and has since updated the service to make the interface more conversational and user-friendly before rolling it out on its website to all customers to try. The company also launched a Facebook chatbot last April, which was mostly manned by human customer reps but has since graduated to handling some basic customer service tasks on its own.

What Brands Need To Do
This is the latest in an ongoing trend of brands tapping machine learning and AI services such as IBM’s Watson to enhance customer experience. Previously, Sony Pictures launched an AI-powered chatbot to promote its new Residential Evil flick while P&G tested a smart shelf that uses machine learning to monitor and analyze shopper behaviors. As consumers continue to embrace messaging apps and chatbot services, brands need to consider developing useful bots powered by AI services to engage customers.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a chatbot experience supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data. If you’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Digiday

Google Home Adds Shopping Capabilities To Take On Amazon’s Alexa

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The competition between virtual assistants heats up again as Google adds ecommerce functions to Google Home, allowing users to buy products via voice from select Google Express partners, which includes Costco, Whole Foods, Bed Bath & Beyond, Fry’s, and Walgreens. This move signals Google’s intention to further challenge Amazon’s Alexa, which had enjoyed a high degree of integration with Amazon’s ecommerce infrastructure. Delivery fees start at $4.99 unless you have a Google Express membership that costs $95/year (or $10/month).

What Brands Need To Do
While it is unlikely that Google will be able to truly compete with Amazon in the conversational commerce space, considering Amazon’s strong advantage in this arena, this still marks an important addition to Google Home as Google continues to buff up its functions to hold its ground against Amazon’s Echo lineup. Earlier this week, reports indicate that both Amazon and Google are working on turning their connected speaker products into landline phone replacements. As smart speakers gain more functions and new selling points, more mainstream consumers would be sold on their increasing use cases and therefore become addressable via conversational interfaces. So, it is time for brands to either seek out similar partnerships with Google and Amazon or explore other ways to reach customers via voice-based interfaces, such as with a branded Alexa skill.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The “Miller Time” Alexa Skill we developed with Drizly for Miller Lite is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: TechCrunch