Tag: ecommerce

Amazon To Lure Holiday Shoppers With Alexa-Exclusive Deals

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon is set to lure more holiday shoppers to try out its Alexa-enabled Echo devices with exclusive deals. Starting with the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and lasting until the rest of the year, Amazon will be offering customers special deals available only through its digital assistant service. In addition, Amazon is also offering customers who purchase an Alexa-exclusive deal between now and Cyber Monday a bonus $5 Amazon gift card. Earlier this year, the ecommerce giant offered similar Alexa-exclusive deals during its Prime Day sales event, which proved quite popular with Alexa users.

What Brands Should Do
As Amazon continues to integrate shopping capabilities into Alexa and incentivizing more shoppers to try it out, it is familiarizing millions of its customers with voice-based conversational commerce as well as locking in their customer loyalty. With Alexa-enabled devices gaining traction with mainstream consumers, voice ordering is something that retail and CPG brands need to look out for.

For other brands, the popularization of voice-based digital assistant devices like Echo or Google Home also opens up a new channel for brands to reach customers in their living rooms. For instance, Amazon recently created an audio game for Alexa to promote its upcoming original auto show The Grand Tour, showing the potential for companies to connect with customers through similar conversational branded content.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more about our take on this topic, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: AdWeek

Michael Kors Launches Casino-Themed WeChat Game For Alibaba’s Singles’ Day

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Friday is Singles’ Day, the biggest day for online shopping in the world championed by China’s ecommerce giant Alibaba. With a massive sales volume that keep breaking its own records, many U.S. brands such as Victoria’s Secret, Crayola, and Beats have jumped on board for a piece of the pie. In particular, fashion brands including Michael Kors, Kate Spade, Coach, and Calvin Klein are offering special deals on Alibaba’s T-Mall this year, discounting products as much as 60% off.

Among all the participating brands, Michael Kors stands out with an innovative approach. The company launched a casino-themed game on popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, which offers players random discount codes to use on Singles’ Day after they play some digital poker and slot machines. Kors promoted the game with GIFs posted to its official WeChat account and a casino-themed shoppable blog post.

What Brands Should Do
This campaign from Michael Kors should be of interest to many U.S. brands trying to crack the code for social commerce. Using aptly Casino-themed mini-games to engage with mobile shoppers and reward their interactions with discount offers. this campaign serves as an intriguing example of how brands, especially retailers, can leverage popular social and messaging platforms to engage with and even sell directly to consumers.

To learn more about how brands can use chat bots to better serve customers via messaging interfaces, check out our Fast Forward feature on this topic.

 

Source: AdWeek

Lead image courtesy of Michael Kors blog

A+E Networks Partners With E-retailer Wayfair To Reinvent TV Shopping

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
A+E Networks is teaming up with home decor and furniture ecommerce site Wayfair to create its first-ever “fully shoppable” TV show. Billed as its most ambitious branded content push, A+E will start airing this lifestyle and home improvement show titled The Way Home this weekend on the Lifetime channel. Every item that appears on the show will be available for purchase on Wayfair’s site. After each segment, the hosts will direct viewers to check out Wayfair.com, and the show will feature on-screen pop-up animations to drive viewers to the Wayfair site.

To better measure the show’s impact on sales, A+E Networks and Wayfair are also teaming up with advanced TV analytics firm Samba TV, which will provide cross-platform measurement and report how effectively on-air marketing drives viewers to the show and how the show drives engagement on Wayfair’s website.

What Brands Should Do
This show still serves as an interesting example of how traditional media companies can work with online retailers to reinvent TV shopping by introducing ecommerce into the living room via branded content. There is also the potential of integrating mobile as a touchpoint to direct viewers to the Wayfair site in a more targeted way. With more and more consumers opting for the ad-free experiences enabled by subscription-based services and ad blockers, it is imperative that brands and media owners work together to engage audiences in new ways, such as sponsored content and native ads.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Adds PayPal Payments And Notifications To Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues to build out the ecommerce capability of its messaging platform as it adds support for PayPal. Select U.S. users now have the option to link their PayPal accounts to their Messenger accounts and use it to handle payments and receive notifications directly within the Messenger app.

Previously, Facebook Messenger only supported debit cards for in-app payments, making this PayPal integration the first digital payment solution added on Messenger. Speculation swirled earlier this year that it would integrate Apple Pay as a payment option, but nothing ever materialized. Last month, Messenger enabled chatbots to accept payments directly within chats.

What Brands Should Do
By adding PayPal support, Facebook gives customers a new checkout option and enhances the payment experience on Messenger, which continues to improve as an emerging channel for brands to sell directly to customers. Retailers such as Everlane and Zulily are using the app as an ecommerce platform to connect with customers in a casual, messaging-based context, and other brands have been using chatbots to reach their audiences on one of the world’s most popular apps.

For more information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on messaging apps and other conversational platforms, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016 and our latest Fast Forward analysis on Messenger chatbots. If you wish to develop a branded chatbot to connect with consumers on messaging apps, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

eBay Dips Toe Into Conversational Commerce With Messenger Bot

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following the addition of a visual search engine to its site, eBay continues to modernize its customer experience as it launches personalized shopping assistant “ShopBot” into beta on Facebook Messenger. According to eBay, the chabot is powered by contextual understanding and predictive modeling based on eBay’s massive inventory. Users can text, talk, or send an image to let ShopBot know what they are looking for, and ShopBot will ask questions to narrow the shopping intent and make recommendations accordingly.

What Brands Should Do
With this launch, eBay joins the growing list of brands experimenting with chatbots to optimize customer experiences. The rise of conversational commerce points to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction. A recent study found that most consumers now prefer to use messaging to interact with businesses rather than calling. Therefore, brands, especially retailers, should take note and develop a strategy for conversational commerce.

The Lab has extensive knowledge about building consumer-facing chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: eBay

 

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of eBay

eBay Launches Furniture Shop With Visual Search Engine

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
eBay launched a furniture and home decor shop on its site called eBay Collective, which comes with a visual search engine to aid product discovery. Leveraging technology from the visual search startup Corrigon it recently acquired, eBay presents shoppers with a “Shop the Room” feature, where they can click on items in images of fully-furnished rooms to see similar products available across eBay’s inventory.

What Brands Should Do
This integration of visual search helps eBay better curate and recommend products on its platform and eliminate the friction of manual search and filter configurations for online shoppers. More brands and retailers need to take note and start exploring new ways to improve the online user experience they offer.

 

Source:TechCrunch

Alibaba To Let VR Shoppers Pay With A Nod

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Alibaba’s Ant Financial recently demonstrated a payment service developed by its incubator F Lab that allows shoppers to confirm their purchases in virtual reality simply by nodding their heads. Dubbed VR Pay, the new payment system is Alibaba’s latest effort to explore the ecommerce potential of virtual reality. The VR payment system also uses a “voice print” technology for verifying user identity by recognizing each person’s unique voice. Alibaba says VR Pay is set for commercial launch by the end of this year.

Why Brands Should Care
This is not the first time Alibaba has experimented with new forms of digital payments. Last year, it rolled out a facial recognition feature in its Alipay service that allows users to authenticate their payments with a selfie. As VR devices continue to inch closer to mainstream consumer adoption, brands would be smart to keep abreast of the development of virtual ecommerce and start exploring emerging sales channels.

Source: Reuters

Why Coach Ditched Its iOS App For An iMessage App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Luxury fashion brand Coach has pulled its iOS app as part of a new mobile strategy to connect with consumers. After a few years of slumping sales, Coach is looking to right its course by going where consumers already are. The company revamped its website to make it mobile compatible and launched an iMessage app called Coachmoji to drive mobile engagement. Coachmoji, consisting of images from Coach’s collection grouped by themes, lets users share “inspiration boards” in chat. The company is planning to allow users to shop directly from the iMessage app.

What Brands Should Do
Coach’s strategy mirrors the ongoing trend of brands establishing a presence and reaching customers on emerging platforms. Other early-adopting brands such as Burger King, Disney, and Toyota have created branded stickers for iMessage. While it remains to be seen how Coach will execute its plan to add an ecommerce component to its iMessage app, it is commendable for adopting a mobile strategy that reflects the reality in mobile user behavior. While Smartphone users spend almost 90% of their time on devices using mobile apps, 90% of branded apps have fewer than 10,000 downloads. In contrast, eMarketer predicts that messaging apps will reach 80% of global smartphone users by 2018. With more and more people choosing messaging apps as their primary means of communication, more brands should start exploring the marketing potential of messaging platforms.

 

Source: Glossy

 

Shopify Makes It Simple To Set Up Shop On Facebook Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Shopify is expanding its partnership with Facebook to make it easier for brands and merchants to start selling directly on Facebook Messenger. A new “Shop Now” button will appear when a user starts chatting with any Facebook Business Page store if that Page uses Shopify’s Messenger sales channel. Tapping the button opens an in-chat portal that showcases the merchant’s product catalog. Users can complete purchases via Shopify’s checkout portal without leaving Messenger.

What Brands Should Do
Earlier this year, Shopify released an iOS keyboard app that enables merchants to sell via various messaging and social apps. As it continues 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.

To learn more about how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, check out the Conversational Interfaces section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header image courtesy of Shopify’s promotional video

Flipkart Turns Sales Event Into A Facebook Scavenger Hunt With 360-Degree Video

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Flipkart, the leading ecommerce site in India, found an interesting way to use 360-degree video on Facebook to promote its annual flagship sales event. The company posted a four-minute-long, 360-degree video on its Facebook Page on Wednesday morning, which shows its employees taking a tour around its office. Viewers are encouraged to look around for clues to unlock various deals and offers hidden in each room of the office. Those that share their screenshots in the Facebook video’s comments section will have a chance to win up to 15 digital coupons.

What Brands Should Do
Flipkart’s use of 360-degree video on Facebook shows ingenuity in the way it fully engages with viewers and rewards their engagement with discounts and offers. More brands looking into producing 360-degree videos should take advantage of its innate interactivity to craft a fun brand experience.

 

Source: Digiday

Header image courtesy of Flipkart’s Facebook Video