Is Pinterest the social e-commerce answer?

posted by Dave Allen, Leave a Comment

I wrote about Pinterest recently #, or more accurately, I wrote about being a man who uses Pinterest as I felt there was a rather sexist, elitist, East-West-coast-big-city snobbery aimed at it’s users. One male commentator supplied damning evidence of its “uselessness” because he surmised that the majority of its users were based in “fly-over country.” Who says American education is suffering..?

With news this morning that Pinterest raised $100 million from its backers #, perhaps that bright spark will think again, as this values Pinterest at $1.5 billion. Maybe having an audience that lives and shops in “fly-over country” isn’t such a bad thing?

And shopping is the key to understanding Pinterest’s valuation. The company may be able to provide the answer to increasing e-commerce on the social web. Facebook has been struggling in this arena #

The latest investment round was led by Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten and Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani has this to say:

“While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining.

“We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.”

So, Rakuten sees the potential of Pinterest users, who clip and share items, being motivated to make purchases of those very items they are sharing.

And here’s Pinterest CEO Ben Silberman:

“Our goal is to help people discover things they love, by connecting people through their shared interests. Bringing Rakuten on board gives us an amazing opportunity to move a step closer to this goal.”

I sense that the Rakuten investment isn’t about looking for a return on their money by selling Pinterest to the usual suspects – Facebook, Amazon, Google – but I could be wrong.

And let’s be clear here – don’t confuse Pinterest with a social network like Facebook. That’s not accurate. It’s more akin to Tumblr than Facebook. When using Pinterest you are technically following people’s passions, not those people themselves. Profiles on Pinterest (here’s mine #) are pulled from Twitter for instance, and can be left as simple as that. There is no “timeline” but there are ample opportunities to share everything that’s compelling to you. Think of it as Twitter on steroids where you can post an image with an embedded link and you have the ability to write 500 characters about the story behind the image. Here’s another example #.

And brands will be able to let their followers purchase their goods.

Maybe now we will see brands rushing to ensure that their websites are mobile-friendly and have a seamless mobile e-commerce solution, because I’d hazard a guess that a lot of Pinterest traffic is coming from the iPad.

And above all, your brand site better be Pinterest-friendly.

Creative destruction in contemporary culture

posted by Dave Allen, Leave a Comment

The New York Times’ A.O. Scott and David Carr wrestle with this one..

Doing more, not less, in mobile

posted by Dave Allen, 1 Comment

When you see a “full desktop site” link on your phone, you’re looking at an admission of failure

Designer, developer and mobile expert Josh Clark # challenges Jakob Nielsen on mobile usability: we should be asking how we can do more, not less, with the mobile experience.

He starts here:

For all of Jakob Nielsen’s many great contributions to web usability over the years, his advice for mobile is just 180-degrees backward. His latest guidelines perpetuate several stubborn mobile myths that have led too many to create ‘lite’ mobile experiences that patronise users, undermine business goals, and soak up design and tech resources.

The notion that you should create a separate, stripped-down version for ‘the mobile use case’ might be appropriate if such a clean mobile use case existed, but it doesn’t.

[Edit] With more mobile phones being sold than PCs, with a growing number of people using phones as their exclusive web client, the idea that we should treat the desktop as the ‘real’ website is simply becoming quaint.

If I’m understanding the argument correctly, it would appear that Nielsen wants to hang on to a problem that he’s used to solving: User experience on desktops and laptops. Here’s his advice #, advice that includes his idea that a brand should have two sites, one desktop, one mobile. That is just plain wrong and Clark takes him to task over it. One url across all devices is the correct answer. Near-ubiquity in mobile demands it.

Here’s a synopsis of Clark’s points:

A growing number of people are using mobile as the only way they access the web

A pair of studies late last year from Pew and from On Device Research showed that over 25 per cent of people in the US who browse the web on smartphones almost never use any other platform

There’s a persistent myth that mobile users are always distracted, on the go, ‘info snacking’ in sessions of 10 seconds. That’s certainly part of the mobile experience, but not the whole story.

‘the mobile use case’ doesn’t exist as neatly as Nielsen suggests

Mobile isn’t just ‘mobile’. It’s also the couch, the kitchen, the three-hour layover, all places where we have time and attention to spare. 42 per cent of mobile users say they use it for entertainment when they’re bored. Those aren’t 10-second sessions. That means we shouldn’t design only for stunted sessions or limited use cases

Nielsen is confusing device context with user intent

All that we can really know about mobile users is that they’re on a small screen, and we can’t divine user intent from that

We use our phones for everything now; there’s no such thing as “this is mobile content, and this is not.

Just because I’m on a small screen doesn’t mean I’m interested in less content or want to do less

We should start with the ideal that all platforms are equal and that all content should be available in a way that is formatted appropriately for whatever device the consumer uses

His (Nielsen’s) suggestion that there should be a distinction between desktop and mobile website URLs is damaging

It’s hard to build a great mobile experience with complete content and features. It takes careful thought and planning. But the obligation of design leaders is not to say, “don’t bother.”

Nielsen suggests that for users who want content that doesn’t appear on the mobile website, you should just offer links to the ‘full site’, by which he means a desktop layout. We all know from our own consumer experiences what a crummy experience that is. Let’s not forget that as designers

And the wrap up:

Mobile isn’t less. In fact, I think the real question is often, “how can I do more on mobile?” Because these devices, despite their smaller size, can do more than desktop. They’re full of sensor superpowers. In many cases, there are opportunities to add content and features to mobile experiences, rather than strip them away. The ideal that we should all start with is that we should build a single website and then gradually enhance the experience to adapt to the capabilities of the specific device.