—Notes— Ecommerce, discovery
About E-commerce Products & Service:
Collections vs. Single Posts: When an e-commerce individual or a business releases products, it is usually in the form of a collection (summer collection, Game of Thrones collection, Coachella collection, etc., etc.), yet current social e-commerce tools forget this fundamental point. The focus is too much on 'single posts' and promoting this (single) post.' What about an app that keeps the focus on these collections of items? Wouldn't that be more effective?
Product Inventory: When consumers come across something interesting, they do not immediately buy. They most probably save it. That's a feature already offered by Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Yet, the product inventory is limited, and therefore that saved item is really of no use to the business or the consumer after it is 'sold out.' It is only clutter and a waste of space. Yet no social media integrates inventory count when a consumer discovers these products. And that is because these tools understand marketing as an aesthetically pleasing or an eye-catching post that will garner more engagement than focusing on the actual product. How can we mend this broken engine?
Introduction Platform: Businesses now can open a store in five minutes. We have Squarespace, Shopify, Etsy, Pinterest Shops, Instagram Shops, Facebook Shops, etc. All this is awesome! Yet, how not a single one of them can capture the value of the other. How about a social media presence that's precisely is your store with your collections rather than traditional Pinterest and Instagram posts. A place where consumers get to see all the new collections, the ones on sale. No marketing, just the products, and services themselves.
Geographic Edge: Everyone speaks about supporting local, yet no tool specifically highlights the local artisans and makers. Until and unless a paid ad showed up in my feed, why is it that I can't list all the artisanal furniture makers within the bay area?
About Consumer:
The consumer is not loyal to anyone except themselves. With this truth in mind, how can we ensure that a discovery app serves the consumer to discover and get to the product and service faster?
A buyer likes to compare, compare this with that, x with y, before making a purchasing decision. Again, with all the single posts and savings, the consumer cannot compare and contrast the products and services. In the end, the consumer is toggling between multiple browser tabs to compare items.
When a consumer comes across a product or service that they want to save, it eventually stays in their saved items for the rest of the life of their account. Current tools are so disconnected from the business's offering and inventory that the saved items are cluttered, as discussed before. Imagine if whatever user holds can get automatically tagged as sold out and eventually automatically cleaned up from the account. No person ever goes back to clean up their saved posts. Yet, this automation will not only keep the app and the user profiles clutter-free but would actually boost up the sales.
Search and discovery toggles. Why do current apps not allow the consumer to toggle between different search and discovery variables? What if other than the most obvious (new, best sellers, engagements based), we allow users to get search results on other variables that matter to the users.
Other thoughts:
No network: it is ridiculously hard to start something from scratch when you do not have a network. No matter how great your product or service is, it does not matter until you have a base network that can create different network clusters.
Mediocrity is awarded: the small businesses that end up garnering a good chunk of following one social media are purely due to ad spending or creating tons of catchy content and packaged well. The packaging and catchiness are not the actual product. It is the fluff. Yet, time and again, these mediocre products end up receiving way more discovery and attention.
Ephemeral engagement: The current social media platforms are designed for engagement and fast engagement, not for serendipitous window shopping or discovery. To get to that, you have to pay, and based on your budget, you will even get attention. Almost all social media platforms thrive on this brief engagement because this means the cycle of advertising is endless. No one is really in this for the consumer, frankly.
Search Engine spending: Too much effort on a search engine, too little on the shop experience. All these aggregator apps for products and services (Pinterest, Instagram, Etsy) spending tons of capital on improving their search engines, more ML, more NLP, more more more. It is excellent, primarily because they will act as beacons of light when people like us are redesigning tools. However, the focus of all these search engines is entirely to make money on tailored ads and content targeting eventually. It is not a bad thing at all, but I think it defeats the purpose of allowing users to search and find the items they want or need simply.