Live chat for an online shop

Some days ago I was informed of an interesting service providing live chat features and support for online shops. The company is called ClixConnect. It was set up by two Canadian guys that allegedly have got some insight from reading the junk here. Don’t know about that but their service is interesting. I tested it myself on their site and got my questions answered right away. I asked some basic questions about where to find info on ClixConnect and then some more difficult ones like whether I could arrange the answering from multiple domains. To me it seems that this could be a handy feature for quite a few webshops, even without the live support from ClixConnect.

Anyway, see it for yourself and ask them many questions. I suppose they are more than happy to help you out As for me, I’m heading to celebrate the Midsummer Festival here in Finland. Cheers!

The Yritys 2.0 Book Is Alive!

The book project I’m working for was officially launched yesterday with the first chapter, the Introduction. If you don’t know any Finnish, now you at least have a good reason to start with it.

Tip of the Day

Does your business already have an entry in Wikipedia? Consider creating one? See guidelines here.

A Day of Email Marketing

Oddly enough there were today FIVE articles on Internet Retailer’s front page about email marketing. That’s reason enough for me to link them here too: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Read if you like.

More of social shopping

I found a link from my del.icio.us bookmarks that relates to my post yesterday about social shopping. And maybe one more from the the NYTimes. There’s something for you to think about over the weekend.

Social shopping is coming!

Lately I’ve been pretty busy with the work and the book project and haven’t had much time for blogging. Today, however, I ran into an interesting article I want to share with you all. It’s about social shopping in the web. Is it going to make a difference? I think it will. Whatever your opininion the article is worth reading. Takes just 5 mins.

Here’s another potentially interesting article on web site metrics. Don’t know much about metrics but it seemed to have a few interesting ideas.

Last night we opened the site for our book on Enterprise 2.0 (in Finnish, sorry). The first chapter will become public in few weeks time. Stay tuned – at least if you know any Finnish

Yritys 2.0 project in Kauppalehti today

A Finnish financial newspaper Kauppalehti is writing about Yritys 2.0 (Enterprise 2.0) internet book project today. (Sorry, I don’t have link to the article itself.)

Briefly about the project: We are some 15 Finnish persons interested in social media and changing business life and about to collaboratively publish a book on Enterprise 2.0 in the net. We will cover the topic from various perspectives and publish the book chapter by chapter as they are finished. In the first place the book will be in Finnish. Maybe later on we translate it to English too.

Visual identity for Yritys 2.0 project revealed

This is the core of the visual identity for the project launched while ago. (For our English speaking friends: Yritys 2.0 equals Enterprise 2.0 in Finnish.) The identity is designed by Antti Raudaskoski from Hahmo Design. The site itself is not yet up but will be within a month. Stay tuned!

Product search á la Pronto

Ever since I found it I’ve been amazed of how simple, elegant and funtional the search at Pronto.com is. I think their claim about being the best product search engine isn’t too much of an overstatement. They really are good. So good that most of the shops and shopping centres and the rest should take a close look at them.

For example, try searching for a shirt. Go to the site and answer the question “What are you shopping for?” simply by typing ’shirt’. Don’t mind about the categories, just click ‘Search’. The result is a list of some 100 000+ shirts of various forms, brands, colours and so forth. But the real gem locates in the left column where you have the “Available filters” that you can use to narrow down your search.

Let’s say we’re looking for cotton shirts (brings the number down to rough 4 558) that have long sleeves (down to 348) and are in the price range from $60 to $80. The number of products suiting my needs is now down to 36. Already something I can live with and that should bring me what I was looking for. And if not, I can always narrow the search further. Or if I want, I can delete a filter simply by clicking on it on my “Selecter Filters” list.

Easy, fast and convenient, say I. I only hope finding what I’m looking for would be as easy everywehere.

Miraculous human touch

I was few days ago shopping online with my wife for some princess-decorated disposable tableware for our daughter’s birthday next week. We visited quite a few shops but unfortunately in the end didn’t find the things we were looking for at a decent price. Anyway, along the two-hour-plus online journey we came across a UK-based and family-owned webshop called Party Ark, which, I think, is a perfect example of how you add the human touch to online shopping experience.

They start it all in the front page with a picture of the mother, Emily, and the son, Oscar, and a short text telling how delighted they are to have me there and explaining their concept without forgetting to mention the exceptional service they want to offer. And this goes on through my whole stay in the shop. They have an about page where there is more pictures of the family and few lines about how it all began. The personal feeling is highlighted also with a signature of Emily appearing here and there. For example in the order page they have Emily sharing my anxiety about filling in my information. I can almost hear her calm voice explaining me there’s no need for frustration and it’ll only take a moment to fill in the form. At that point it’s really hard not to appreciate their service.

After all I feel a bit bad we didn’t end up buying from them (due to high shipping costs to Finland). However, I really wish them and their business all the best. They had a tell-a-friend functionality at their site but I decided to share my fabulous experience here with all of you. Please, go and take a look at Party Ark. Emily, Alistair and Oscar really deserve it.