Is your virtual store online yet?
Ray Allegrezza, Editor in Chief -- Furniture Today, August 25, 2008
Back in the day, a picture used to be worth a thousand words.
Today, in the fast-paced Web 2.0 world, a picture can be worth a thousand bucks or more, specifically if you're selling home furnishings on the Web.
But in order to reap the reward, you need to provide an e-experience that virtually allows your customer to replicate her in-store impressions while in the privacy of her home. When she's shopping your merchandise online — and this applies to both retailers and manufacturers — she wants more than just a one-dimensional image of your line.
I know from talking to consumers that this is an issue. I also know from talking with a number of retailers that they are equally hungry for ways to make their Web sites as robust, interactive and virtual as possible.
Before you accuse me of pie-in-the-sky thinking, I am here to tell you that other retailers are already well down that road.
One example that comes to mind involves a collaboration between Sears and IBM that debuted at last year's Consumer Electronics Show. What attendees got to see was a prototype 3-D showroom that was billed as the Sears Virtual Home. The purpose of this virtual store was meant to showcase the possibilities of using a virtual world to create a new customer experience.
A consumer who “enters” the virtual store has the ability to change the color of the cabinets and countertops in the virtual kitchen, create three-dimensional home-office configurations and change the size, color and shapes of ovens, television sets.
During the launch, Paul Miller, Sear's vice president of direct commerce, said that the goal of this venture was to empower the consumer, in part by allowing her to experience Sears' products in a way that closely replicates real life.
Since that time, other retailers, including Circuit City, have moved forward with strategies designed to incorporate virtual selling into their business plans.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran a story detailing how Kohl's had launched a new line of youth apparel that debuted not in Kohl's stores, but on Stardoll.com, a virtual community for teens. Visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121910159887951221.html to see the story.
Other industries already get the picture. Will we?
