[Sigia-l] A different kind of shopping experience

[Paola Kathuria]

Ziya Oz wrote:
> if in fact you're the shopping type, do
> you ever *start* with color or geography as a point of departure? I know
> color can and does play an important facet in search, but can it ever be the
> starting point? Do people really say I want "something/anything red" or does
> red always come after you've selected "shoes," as an attributive facet?

Ooh, yes, colour is definitely a starting factor. I have an
anecdote (regarding art) and some search stats from a jewellery
shop.

Choosing art:

The Royal Academy in London has a yearly Summer Exhibition to
which the public can submit up to 3 entries. They get 8,000
submissions for 800 places. Over the years, I've made hundreds
of digital pictures for my own use as desktop wallpapers and
decided to pick the best and submit three good-quality framed
prints to the RA.[1]

I asked 20 friends to help me pick 'the best'. I printed 150 of
my favourite images onto postcard-sized paper and asked each
friend to rate them by putting them into one of three piles
("don't like it", "it's okay", "I love it"). At the end, I asked
which one image they'd like as a print as a thank-you.

They talked as they went through the images and it was very
clear very quickly that people responded first to colour ("ooh,
what a nice blue", or "yuk, I don't like red"), regardless of
whether the picture itself was nice or not. If they didn't like
the colour, they immediately dismissed the picture.

Even though, at the time, I was a bit miffed that colour was
the initial deciding factor without considering anything else,
I realised that I'd make buying choices the same way.


Buying jewellery:

I relaunched my web site in August and added a shop to sell my
jewellery. I apply hierarchical terms from a controlled taxonomy
to jewellery items. Visitors can filter the catalogue by term [2].
On an item's detail page, its terms are displayed and one can
click on them to find similar items (by term or cluster) [3].
There's also a search form if people want to search on more than
one term [4].

Analysing my logs now, I find that colour was the attribute
searched for the most for all first searches within a visit
and for all searches.

First searches (262) (by tag or filter):

42% Colour     (e.g., Colour/blue/turquoise)
24% Material   (e.g., Material/pearls)
22% Type       (e.g., Type/earrings)
 7% Style      (e.g., Style/long)
 5% Gemstone   (e.g., Gemstone/turquoise)

All searches (482):

36% Colour
29% Type
27% Material
 1% Feature    (e.g, Feature/adjustable)
 6% Gemstone

Of course, colour and geography (where it's made/found) will be
relevant to certain products, such as wine and gems.


Paola

[1] http://www.paolability.com/art/picture.lml?p=hexodus (2004 RA submission)
[2] http://www.paolability.com/shop/jewellery/
[3] http://www.paolability.com/shop/jewellery/detail.lml?j=lariat115
[4] http://www.paolability.com/shop/jewellery/search.lml