Shopping Gadgets & Transactional Banners: Is This The End Of Traditional Carts?

The age of Web 2.0 and social media has really begun to take full effect in the eCommerce realm lately, especially with the many releases of new applications, widgets, gadgets and other unique tools that are helping to shape the new world of eCommerce and shopping Online. As we take a deeper look into two of these new shopping applications, we will attempt to find answers to the following three questions …

Are these new applications and tools the wave of the future and buying Online?

Will shopping gadgets and transactional banners soon be replacing traditional carts?

What effect will shopping applications and social networking tools have on eCommerce?

Today we are going to talk about two new shopping services that are quickly creating tons of buzz and raising many questions in the industry. The first is a completely new way to shop Online straight from third party banner advertisements (yeah, you don’t even have to visit the site that sells the actual item you are buying) and the second is a new shopping gadget by Google that allows you to buy from Google Checkout stores.

We will start by introducing the new services and then go into answering the three questions above.

Tailgate has recently released their new Transactional Banners at Gettailgate.com/en/. The banners allow shoppers to browse and buy products directly from third party sites which the banners are displayed. It basically lets any customer buy from you without having to visit the site itself, they simply browse and buy straight from the banner ad itself or any other advertisement in your campaign. The feature is a great way to extend your customer reach and branch out to allow your customers to buy from you in more places on the Web.

The example below outlines the transactional banner purchase process in 5 steps. There are multiple ad layouts and advertisers have quite a bit of control over the look and feel, content and buying process. Let’s take a look shall we?

Step #1 - Product or Service Advertisement

Step #2 - Add Item To Buy

Step #3 - Enter Payment Details

Step #4 - Enter Personal Details

Step #5 - Confirm Order

Google has recently released a new iGoogle shopping Gadget called Shop With Google Checkout. The new Gadget allows users to shop for items from stores that offer Google Checkout as a payment option. It features top 10 product lists and displays the items for users to browse and potentially buy. Shop With Google Checkout is updated daily with new lists of items for shoppers to browse and make purchases from.

If you would like to offer feedback to Google about the new gadget simply email: checkout-gadget-feedback@google.com

It would certainly appear that services like the transactional banners and shopping widgets could give traditional eCommerce a run for it’s money in the future, but there are many hurdles that still have to be overcome by the developers who create and distribute these new shopping apps. For one, people are used to buying in a certain way Online and to all of a sudden upset that comfortable feeling they have when shopping from sites would be a difficult habit to break. eCommerce has been around long enough for users to get used to certain constants when shopping Online. If we were to interrupt that process now it may set us back in the long run. I think that there will be more releases of these types of tools in the future, but we are still a long way from shopping solely on applications like the two discussed above.

It is safe to say that it would be highly unlikely for us to see transactional banners and shopping gadgets replacing traditional checkout processes soon. Other than the reasons mentioned above, it would be hard for these applications to catch on fast enough to replace our current shopping and checkout processes. Out of the two, I would say Widgets have the best chance of replacing traditional carts, but I wouldn’t even go as far as saying, “replace.” It will be more like how we use CSE’s rather than an entire replacement, meaning that widgets will be a part of Online selling strategy rather than the entire strategy. I would be willing to bet that merchants could make a fair penny off selling through widgets, however it shouldn’t be something you consider as a replacement at this time.

I have a hard time believing that transactional banners will have a solid place in the industry as far as customers making purchases. The age of the banner is long gone, in my opinion, and I can’t see it making a come back anytime soon. There is kind of a stigma associated with banners and I don’t think users will be able to trust entering in their personal information over a third party sites banner for another product or service. This may be something that gets more popular as security measures improve, but as far as replacing traditional carts, we will not see it happen in the near future.

As I stated above, I believe that shopping widgets and transactional banners should be used more as an alternative listing environment rather than be your whole strategy. Merchants interesting in selling through these applications should consider using Google Checkout as a payment method to take advantage of all the places Google puts those stores and all the ways they help to cross-promote Checkout enabled products.

Merchants interested in using transactional banners should consider how much revenue they have made of banner impressions in the past for the products they offer for purchase. If you have used banners as a large part of your strategy before, and it has been successful, you may want to consider trying transactional banners within your strategy. Remember, whether you are considering one, the other or both, just be sure you do not rely solely on those types of selling environments to generate you millions in revenue over a year (at least not at this time). In the future, we may see this trend become more of an important aspect of selling Online, however now I think it’s just too early to make a HUGE impact on the industry like some have speculated.

Further insights and reading on these two new services can be found below …