Welcome to my new column on ITWeb. The objective is to look at e-commerce in SA, not from a vendor marketing pitch, but rather at some of my ideas on the successes, failures and trends. Views are entirely my own, and are based on my experiences and thoughts.
Virtual Mall Rats?
There is one part of American culture we will hopefully not have to face on the Net - Mall Rats. In fact, Mall Rats would have a hard time trying to find a place to "hang out" on the Net in the absence of good online malls.
Maybe with the greater adoption of 3D graphics on the Web we will see more virtual malls spring up.
The failure of malls to gain a significant share of online shoppers is one of the few areas where the Net has not shown that it can be a new haven for shoppers. Successes like Amazon.com, Dell, BarnesandNoble.com, etc are all built without the use of a mall to gain entrance. In all reality, ask Net-wise "rats" where they go online and they will rattle -off some well known names, but ask them where they go physically, it will usually be a popular brick-and-mortar mall in their local neighborhood.
There are a few companies investing millions online to build these icons to teenage capitalist worship, but few have solved the question of how to get people to use the mall and not go directly to the shops. The ability to browse and entertain oneself, as well as shop, is a feature of malls. However, it is difficult to re-create that experience online. If you need to shop online, you go to the shop you want, like GAP for clothes. If you need entertainment you go to any number of sites, like 24.com, and if you need to chat there are enough rooms and diversity to keep you busy for years.
Maybe with the greater adoption of 3D graphics on the Web we will see more virtual malls spring up. Comic Chat with its cool interface is a step in the right direction but needs to be extended to the rest of the online experience.
Facing reality
So what will become of the real-life online mall, what will happen when all shoppers move online, as predicted by a number of Internet gurus? Will we see the demise of the local hangout and a new online version appearing? Well, I suppose we could see the portal as an attempt to build the next shoppers' paradise, but unless the builders of these sites find the formula to attract the "rats" then they will be lonely places. This is not a comment that online shopping is destined for the scrap heap, rather the exact opposite -, it is going to grow massively every year and billions are going to be spent online, but will it be in shops or malls?
A recent book by Tom Clancy and Steve R Pieczenik, Netforce, takes us into the future of a 3D virtual Internet world where you can pick your own reality and wander around this new environment world, for example as if it were was your local mall.
The trick is in taking Internet terminology and applying it to your new virtual world, so online shopping Web sites are represented by shops which you "walk" into. You hand your credit card to a clerk to make a payment, but in reality you are passing an electronic certificate, and the other people you meet in your world are real people on the Net, but are seeing you differently in their own world.
Whatever happens, we have a lot to look forward to. Hopefully I will always have the ability to shut out these pesky Mall Rats from my online shopping experience and to go directly to the shop I want. Online shopping is an experience that can only grow in leaps and bounds and is definitely here to stay.
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