[May 31st, 2000]

See Also   Want A Sticky Website That Sells? Forget Content!   Giving Customers What They Want   Rule Busters Lose   Building Your Web Site's Sales   Abandoned Shopping Carts: Enigma or Sloppy E-Commerce?   The Only Visitor That Counts Is A Repeat Visitor   Three Steps to Get More Customers   Your Web Site - Do It Yourself? or Get Serious!   How To Make Them Buy Now   The Future of E-Commerce Stinks!   Beware Overload   Does Your Site Have Stopping Power?   Online Sales Psychology That Works   And the Broadband Played on, and on...   How Your Web Site Can Learn From Newspapers   Promise Not to Tell   Where's Your Community?   Understanding Your Visitors   The Seven Deadly Web Site Sins   The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - Part 2   The Good, The Bad and the Ugly - Part 1

One of the downsides of e-commerce is that it is unable to completely recreate the traditional brick and mortar shopping experience. In a “real” store shoppers are able to use all five of their senses when selecting a product while in a virtual store surfers are limited to two - sight and sound. This sensory limitation explains why the most popular items selling on the 'Net today are products such as CDs and books, as these can be more or less fully evaluated using only these two senses.

However, there are several new technologies in the pipeline that could significantly enhance the online shopping experience. In this article I'm going to take a brief look at three of these: Imation's Verifi, which allows for the accurate reproduction of colours on computer monitors; Immersion's TouchSense, which allows shoppers to “touch” products in an online store; and finally DigiScent's iSmell system which (believe it or not) will allow shoppers to actually smell products.

I should emphasise that some of these technologies are still in development and even those that aren't are probably beyond the technical or financial resources of most small businesses to implement. However, I fully expect that over the coming months some - if not all -of these new technologies will become easily accessible to the smaller Web merchant.

Imation Verifi

If you've ever tried printing an image out on a colour inkjet printer you will undoubtedly have discovered that getting the colours on the printout to match the colours on your monitor's screen is practically impossible. The simple fact is that PCs - and to a lesser extent Macs - make a very poor job of accurately reproducing colours. This is a critical point to understand if you are trying to sell a product online: you can more or less guarantee that an online shopper will be unable to accurately see the colours in your product photographs.

How important is this? Well, according to a recent BizRate study, over 50% of online shoppers stated that they would not make further purchases from a Web merchant that delivered an item in a colour that wasn't what they expected. This is the problem that Imation have designed their Verifi system to solve.

Here's how it works. When a shopper visits a Verifi-enabled Web site for the first time they are invited to take a Web based survey that establishes how their monitor, computer, operating system and browser handle colour. This information in then stored as a cookie in the shopper's browser. Then, when they view a product image, the Verifi system reads the information in the cookie and combines this with the profile of the scanner (or digital camera etc.) that the merchant used to produce the image to generate a colour-accurate image in the shopper's browser.

Immersion TouchSense

If you're a computer games fiend you'll probably have come across TouchSense before as this is the technology that allows you to “feel” the action in games such as LucasArt's Episode One Racer, in combination with a product like Microsoft's SideWinder Force Feedback Joystick.

Immersion has now extended this technology to the desktop. Currently only working with Logitech's WingMan Force Feedback Mouse, TouchSense technology adds a new dimension to mouse feedback by creating various tactile sensations on the mouse as you manipulate it. From an e-commerce perspective, Immersion's intention is that this feedback will allow shoppers to feel the texture, softness, or contours of products.

From the Web merchant's point of view, this technology is still very much in its infancy, as sophisticated algorithms need to be generated to describe the texture of each item in their store. However, the usability and accessibility of this product is bound to improve with time and so this is definitely a technology to keep an eye on.

DigiScent iSmell

Although at first sight this may appear to be the most bizarre of the new technologies reviewed here, in many respects it could turn out to be the most significant of all for Web merchants. Smell is one of our most important senses and is heavily relied on when making purchasing decisions. That's why shoe stores and bakeries go to great lengths to fill their stores with the smells of their products. If you're selling “smelly” products such as perfumes, candles etc. then you should be able to significantly increase your sales by enabling shoppers to smell your products.

There are two main parts to the iSmell system, software and hardware. The software is named ScentStreams, and DigiScent have recently signed an agreement with Real Networks to allow this software to be auto-downloaded to their installed base of some 100 million RealPlayer systems. The resulting widespread availability of the ScentStreams software should go a long way to ensuring the success of the iSmell system.

The other part of the system is the iSmell Personal Scent Synthesiser, which is due to be launched at the end of this year. The synthesiser plugs in to either the serial or USB port of a computer and uses small, replaceable scent cartridge (similar to inkjet cartridges) to generate scents by emitting one or more scents from a “palette” of around 100.

No pricing information is available yet on the synthesiser, although DigiScents say they are planning to make it a “very low cost” peripheral, similar in price to a computer speaker. Clearly, the success of the DigiScent system is totally dependent on how many synthesisers they can sell.

My gut feel is that novelty value alone should ensure healthy sales as long as they can get the price low enough.

Links
Imation		http://www.imation.com
Immersion		http://www.immersion.com
DigiScents		http://www.digiscents.com