Title: b r e t t l i d e r
1Why Amazon is Not Enough
- Towards the future of eCommerce and the Web
- Brett Lider
- 07 March 2005
2Agenda
- Foundations of Future Web
- What is the Future Web?
- Broad overview of Future Webs composition
- Infrastructure
- Components
- A Future Web Architecture
- Deep-dive into one potential Web 2.0 application
C2B - Better Bookshelves a proposed C2B initiative
- IAs and Future Web a match made in heaven
3Why Amazon is not enough, part 1
- It doesnt really know you
- Has so many of the pieces, but not enough of the
whole - Siloed technical platform are what cause this
- Approaching the limits of traditional
CRM/personalization - How many eCommerce sites are in a similar
position?
4Defining the Future Web 2.0
- From the golden source, Wikipedia
- Web 2.0 defines a newer incarnation of the World
Wide Web typified by the transition from the
typical website hosting HTML/XHTML pages, to a
platform that provides a point of presence
(sometimes known as a Web portal), from which any
of the following interactions may occur - Syndication of content using XML based formats
such as RSS, RDF, Atom, and others - Aggregation of content published using XML based
formats such as RSS, RDF, Atom, and others - Publishing of invocation endpoints for XML based
Web services (these may be of the SOAP/WSDL/WS-
variety of RESTian XML-RPC) - Conventional publishing of HTML/XHTML documents
- Exposure of WebDAV based resources and collections
5Some Components of Web 2.0
- Social Networks (SN)
- Desktop information
- Browser history
- Tastes and preferences
- Analog information
6Practical use of Social Networks
A marriage of working your network and sending
a resume into the void
Its still a lot of work just for this
7Access to the desktop Blinkx
Retrieval people dont remember where they saw
it web or desktop?
8Access to the desktop Google
Search what can my desktop files do to help me
find what I need on the web?
9Access to the desktop Music
All about me and my music
10Access to the desktop Music Commerce
All about what Apple wants to sell me
11Tying desktop music data to the web
Tracking, community, recommendations
12Integrating browser history data
Remind me where I have been, what I have searched
on
13Web-based bookmarks
Universal bookmark access, sharing, community
14Web-based archiving
Killing link-rot dead
15Physical history data web and desktop
Who have I been hanging out with? What have I
been meeting about?
16Integrating non-digital information
- Delicious Library and other collection
management tools help us curate our material
goods
17Why Amazon is not enough, part 2
- Aside from A9, what is Amazon doing to bring
these concepts to the eCommerce experience?
18A Vision of Web 2.0 for eCommerce
19What is C2B?
- C2B is the empowerment of customers with their
past purchase and preference data, allowing them
to share it when and with who they desire - C2B is the platform businesses can use to deliver
products with more resonance and to target
customers with more value than ever before - C2B is superior to the promise and practice of
CRM because it provides a more complete consumer
perspective and deeper insight
20C2B Customer-to-Business
user
- One customer to many businesses
- Inverts the pyramid
- Allows information reuse, a key metric in getting
people to contribute it - B2C and traditional CRM are not good enough
anymore - A Customers interaction with Vendor X is a
subset of that persons activities - The superset is richer and its completeness is
invaluable - Vendor-Vendor coopitition for customer data is
key to getting access to the superset - (C2B a.k.a. CMI Customer-Managed Interactions)
data
customer
customer
data
online retailers
21Why is C2B important?
- Analysts describe the increasing demands from
consumers that businesses must know them to earn
their business - Consumers will demand a more and more personal
relationship over time - Gartner and the usual suspects
- Micro-markets, narrow-casting, and one-to-one
messaging are the marketing Holy Grail - The Harvard Business Review just ran an article
on C2B, hailing it as the heir to CRM - They call it Customer-Managed Interactions - CMI
22Visualizing C2B a complete picture of a
customers purchases
Online retailer
23Visualizing C2B a complete picture of a
customers purchases
Other online retailers
Brick and mortar
Online retailer
Gifts
Library, school, Work, personal loan
24Visualizing C2B a complete picture of a
customers purchases
Other online retailers
Are you marketing based on this?
Brick and mortar
Online retailer
Gifts
Library, school, Work, personal loan
Or this?
25The Status Quo in Recommendation-Based
Merchandising Crappy
Online retailer
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
26The Status Quo in Recommendation-Based
Merchandising Crappy
Online retailer
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
2. Recommendation Merchandising (and quality)
27The Status Quo in Recommendation-Based
Merchandising Crappy
Online retailer
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
2. Recommendation Merchandising (and quality)
3. Recommendation-based purchases
28The Status Quo in Recommendation-Based
Merchandising Crappy
Online retailer
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
2. Recommendation Merchandising (and quality)
3. Recommendation-based purchases
Strength of relationship
29Recommendation-Based Merchandising the C2B Way
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
1. Other online retailer purchases data
Online retailer
1. Gift data
1. Brick and mortar purchase data
1. Library, school, Work, personal loan data
30Recommendation-Based Merchandising the C2B Way
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
1. Other online retailer purchases data
Online retailer
1. Gift data
1. Brick and mortar purchase data
1. Library, school, Work, personal loan data
2. Recommendation Merchandising (and quality)
31Recommendation-Based Merchandising the C2B Way
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
1. Other online retailer purchases data
Online retailer
1. Gift data
1. Brick and mortar purchase data
1. Library, school, Work, personal loan data
2. Recommendation Merchandising (and quality)
3. Recommendation-based purchases
32Recommendation-Based Merchandising the C2B Way
1. Online retailer purchases (and data)
1. Other online retailer purchases data
Online retailer
1. Gift data
1. Brick and mortar purchase data
1. Library, school, Work, personal loan data
2. Recommendation Merchandising (and quality)
3. Recommendation-based purchases
Strength of relationship
33Future C2B Trusted 3rd Parties
Online retailers
My Network Stuff host (trusted 3rd party)
My Library (all media types)
My Preferences
34Future C2B Trusted 3rd Parties
Anonymizing filter (optional)
Online retailers
Recommendations
My Network Stuff host (trusted 3rd party)
My Library Preferences
User Profile
Aggregated Recommendations
Recommendations
User Profile
User Profile
Recommendations
My Library (all media types)
My Preferences
35Future C2B Trusted 3rd Parties
Anonymizing filter (optional)
Online retailers
Recommendations
My Network Stuff host (trusted 3rd party)
My Library Preferences
User Profile
Aggregated Recommendations
Recommendations
User Profile
Recommendation-Based Purchases
User Profile
Recommendations
My Library (all media types)
My Preferences
Recommendation-Based Purchases
36Example Amazon.com Better Bookshelves
- A proposal for improving CD, DVD, Game, and Book
recommendations - To evaluate the business case estimate the
audience and the value - 55 of families own a digital still camera
- Portion who are Amazon customers
- Portion who would be interested in the BB
program - Portion who would be able to complete the BB
process - Estimated incremental sales based on a richer
user profile
37How the Better Bookshelves program works
1. Image uploaded to Amazon servers (or processed
client-side)
3. Image processed for individual book spines
- 4. Book spines OCRd (or image comparison
performed) to get book titles - THE MUSEUM AT PURGATORY
- THE BEAUTY SUPPLY DISTRICT
- McSWEENEYS QUARTERLY CONCERN ISSUE FIVE
- D(IROTHY PARKER Complete Stories
2. Image auto-rotated
4a. If OCR technology used, extracted book titles
compared to known list of book titles and best
matches generated
Next page
38How the Better Bookshelves program works (cont.)
- 5. Customer reviews suggested titles and approves
them - The Museum at Purgatory (Byzantium Book)
- Complete Stories
- Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer
- McSweeney's Issue No. 5 (McSweeney's Issue,
Volume 5)
6. Titles added to Items you own page and
influence recommendations
7. Recommendations improve, driving more sales!
39More C2B examples Netflix vs. Walmart
Lowering switching costs
40More C2B examples Travel business vs. Travel
business
- Getting a better deal by showing a business my
full profile - Understanding the potential value of new
customers - One years reservation emails
- United
- Orbitz
- Travelocity
- Europcar
- Hertz
- Expedia
41C2B is coming
- It has a community of business academics around
it - People are actively thinking about C2B as a
business - It has clear advantages over monolithic CRM
approaches to the same issue, but leverages CRM
approaches - It gets businesses out of data warehousing and
focused on service and the relationship - Risky, but competition will bring it about
42Why Amazon is not enough, part 3
- Amazon is not enough because it could be so much
more - The same goes for eCommerce and the Web
43Wrap-up
- Web 2.0 can make things like C2B possible
- Sites and businesses need to start thinking about
the opportunities in this - By being on top of this, IAs can be agents of
some serious innovation - Be it, dont dream it
44Contact
- Brett Lider
- blider_at_gmail.com
- Y! and AOL IM brettlider
- C2B Blog www.brettlider.com
45References
- A9, A9 Toolbar
- Amazon.com
- Apple iTunes Music Store
- Audioscrobbler
- Blinkx (desktop search)
- CMI/C2B mailing list
- Evite
- Gartner
- Google Desktop Search
- Harvard Business Review (direct article link)
- iTunes Music Recommendation System
- LinkedIn
- Netflix
- Slogger
- Walmart