Internet Marketing: E-customer, Can’t you do it the way I like it?

Posted by arlene

Come on! Give the e-customer what he wants and stop messing him about. There is nothing very enjoyable about spending money on stuff that isn’t quite right because he can’t buy it the way he wants it.

Personalization

Personalization should mean exactly that. It must take the scope of `personal’ marketing beyond a glorified mailshot that proves only that you can merge the e-customer’s name with your form letter or web page. It is of very little use knowing what he wants if you cannot deliver it.

Attempts to personalize come across as crass and unsophisticated if the service or product remains unchanged. Organize the business so that the e-customer can choose from a combination of all available features to create exactly what he wants to buy. Design the electronic service so that the level of choice being offered is immediately apparent and accessible. Make him understand that the pleasure and privilege of the purchase was all his.

The Barbiettes of the world can create unique dolly divas on barbie.com. Pink flowers and sparkling white stars provide a virtual world to match her real-world ‘personality’. Following seven easy steps, it is possible for the mini e-customer to choose from a range of 76,000 combinations including faces, eyes, lips and hairstyle. Next step — save your unique creation and get mum or dad to make that order.

Elsewhere, customestore.co.uk allows the older e-customer of more refined taste to order up a tailor-made shirt to his exact requirements, style, and measurements. You can even have a personalized car made in under three days as a result of pioneering work done in the UK.

If dolls, shirts and cars can be made to order, why not your stuff or services?

If the e-customer can’t have what he wants made to measure then he can at least get someone else to shop around for him. Meet the Bats – Advice, Hot, Compare and Finder — cute digital versions of the Tele-tubbies or the Clanger’s sophisticated cousins. They have been put into the virtual world to help the e-customer. They exist only to serve.

They are the personalization of technology’s ability to search, compare and filter information. If you want to find the best price for a product anywhere on the web then you can simply ask the relevant Bot to do the biz. To find the cream of the cracking deals out there in ‘ether, ether land’.

Simply type in what you want and click. Moments later the little compere Bot, dressed up to impress in shiny yellow, will deliver the list of stuff that matches your request.

Science fiction nonsense? No.

Useful. But is it a shopping experience? That depends on how the Bot shares its results. It could just be a one-liner … or a link. Better still if it is a full, rich experience along the lines of ‘you’ll never guess what I found’ accompanied by a demonstration of the product.

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