[Sigia-l] A different kind of shopping experience

[Derek Rogerson]

It is standard in ecommerce now to include color information for a
product and local search couldn't be hotter.

As for a point-of-departure for shopping experiences who can say (as a
consumer) they haven't bought something because it's "in my color" or
because it's "so close, it's just right there" geographically speaking.
The other common points-of-departure are size, brand, and price.

Etsy is trying to be more engaging with this Flash UI than ordered
information (lists and so on). This UI strategy recognizes users don't
enjoy the leash of overly-controlled experiences because it lacks
naturalness and doesn't engage the range of the customer's personality.
Controlled experiences (and I'm thinking here of the common
drilldown-type of hierarchy obedience) tends to shun discovery and erode
ownership qualities. Consumers feel they are being told what to buy and
also how to buy it, which is about as much fun as standing in Soviet-era
bread lines. So this is an attempt (like any mashup) to connect with
users by breaking-through consumer disaffection with the common, slow,
regulated, identity-draining processes and offering a fresh turnaround:
a user-centered (not product or process-centered) perspective. And it's
Flash, what could be more fun (free-of-form) that that?

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www.derekrogerson.com