AOL overhauls shopping center
By Margaret Kane, ZDNet
Wednesday May 19 7:57 PM ET
America Online Inc. is going shopping, HTML style.
The company said today it will create Shop@AOL, a platform that dumps its current proprietary format in favor of using HTML. The new platform, which the company will roll out in phases between June and September, will have a coherent design with its three Web sites.
AOL (NYSE:AOL - news) will remake its design, and duplicate the new look and feel on its CompuServe and Netcenter properties, executives said.
Not ads -- advertorials
Prominent in the new design: "Advertorial" sections that feature products from various AOL merchants, said Patrick Gates, the company's vice president of e-commerce.
"We'll aggregate products from our merchant partners and present it in a user-friendly format," he said. "Consumers won't have to go to each individual site to gather products."
The hope is that the combined storefronts will lure in new shoppers or convince existing shoppers to buy more things, something retailers call an "upsell." Portal sites have been trying to find a way to convince merchants that having a storefront on their site is worth paying for.
By moving to an HTML format, AOL will be able to better communicate with merchants whose stores already use that technology, and it will be able to link the stores across its properties.
"Advertisers and content partners have said to AOL that they don't want to build it twice, and now (AOL) is finally in a position where it can say 'it's seamless'" between AOL, Netscape and CompuServe, said Peter Krasilovsky, an analyst at the Kelsey Group in Princeton, N.J.
E-wallet
The AOL platform will link merchants through new features, such as an improved search engine and a Quick Checkout, which lets a user click on a tool bar icon to send purchasing data to any AOL merchant.
A Web-based version of the Quick Checkout, which will work with non-AOL merchants, is expected later this summer, said AOL's Gates.
Quick Checkout is similar to the electronic wallet concept, where users enter personal and purchasing data in one place, instead of having to enter the data every time they buy something.
Convincing users to give up that data is a key step in making e-commerce work, Krasilovsky said.
"Every time people make a purchase they enter their credit card fresh, because they're so afraid of fraud," he said. "Once we get past that point, that's when things will start to happen." |
