Article

ShopTogether unites distant shoppers online

New tool lets two or more people browse an online store in tandem.

March 15, 2010

Elke Hockauf opened her natural cosmetics company, Hautbalance, seven years ago, with one brick-and-mortar store near Berlin, Germany, and a strong e-commerce presence.

Early on she couldn’t afford traditional advertising, so she used Google AdWords and posted articles in forums before eventually enlisting price-comparison portals such as Pangora Shopping.com. But she found that ineffective and too expensive, so in the past year she has shifted her marketing focus to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and My Space.

Late last year she added another layer: ShopTogether, an overlay program developed by DecisionStep Inc. that ties into social networking programs and lets two or more people browse an online store in tandem.

Hockauf said the effort to remake her online store has been complicated but worthwhile. Earlier last year she integrated an interface between her online and brick-and-mortar stores and the company’s merchandise-management system, which lets the company respond quickly to customer needs. In the fall she added the ShopTogether function to the site’s toolbar, and after working out programming and language issues, it went live on Dec. 1.

Early results are encouraging, she said, with average orders up 15 percent over a year ago and holiday sales up 50 percent compared to December 2008, from 30.74 Euros to 46.33. Average site visits have doubled in length.

Shopping with family – the most trusted review source

Consumers like to shop with friends, family and colleagues and trust them more than advertisers, expert reviews or bloggers, according to a DecisionStep white paper about real-time social shopping. Over the past few years, the 10-year-old company has developed ShopTogether, a proprietary program that lets users connect to e-commerce sites via social networking sites, e-mail or instant messaging.

In addition to Hautbalance, key customers include MattelShop.com, the toy company’s new e-commerce site; CharlotteRusse.com, a young women’s clothing retailer; and FootLocker.com. DecisonStep has a new partnership with Buy.com and will soon go live on that site with new functionality, spokesman Keith Wiley said.

“Whether you wanted someone else’s opinion, or whether it’s just more fun to shop with another person, this had not been addressed online at all,” president and CEO John Jackson said, explaining where the idea originated. The growth of social networking has made real-time social shopping viable, he said.

The concept appealed to Hockauf, who started Hautbalance (translation: “skin balance”) in 2003. The company sells more than 3,600 products from about 100 manufacturers, she said, and has become Germany’s leading reseller of natural cosmetics. Education is a significant part of the company’s mission, and it employs licensed cosmeticians who can provide independent consultation, as well as publishing a monthly newsletter.

It’s important for cosmetics shoppers to have extensive consultation with trusted friends, family and experts, she said, and it’s common to see mothers, daughters and grandmothers, or friends with friends, shopping together in her brick-and-mortar store.

The ShopTogether Friends application extends that dynamic to the Web and is particularly helpful to people who aren’t near the store, she said. The ShopTogether Crowd application is also useful because it highlights fashion trends, “which are important in the cosmetic-business.” She will soon implement ShopTogether Concierge, which will expand Hautbalance cosmeticians’ ability to interact with customers online.

She compared ShopTogether to word-of-mouth advertising and said it is more effective, in terms of costs per click, than classical forms of advertisement. As e-commerce matures in Germany, with customers growing accustomed to the standards defined by large sites such as Amazon and expecting other sites to measure up, she believes the service will become commonplace.

"You discover new things"

Natural skin-care products are important to Susanne Kettelför, a 43-year-old media and culture public relations adviser in Berlin. She had developed an affinity for Hautbalance, often visiting the store in Birkenwerder.

But her sister Sabine, 41, a biologist, lives in Bonn, about 600 kilometers away. Sabine is just learning about natural cosmetics, Susanne said, but shopping together in person is not an option. So the sisters were excited when Hautbalance added ShopTogether,  and the timing was good: They browsed the online store together before Christmas, and Susanne picked out a gift for her sister and purchased it.

Kettelför said she prefers to shop in person; Hautbalance is the only place where she regularly shops online. Germans “are not people who try every new thing we see,” she said, but after the company sent announcements about ShopTogether, the sisters tried it and found it useful for discussing favorite items or products that are useful for things such as dry skin or couperose.

Kettelför likes ShopTogether “because you discover new things (and) new products, because it's very easy (and) because you are connected with a person far away from you. It's really a shopping-together-feeling, virtually.”

She said the sisters tend to spend more time and money online now, and they delay their purchases until they “collect” several products, to manage delivery charges. She likened shopping together online to speaking on the telephone. Occasionally, to avoid misunderstandings, they’ll get on the phone to discuss.

Hockauf said she would recommend ShopTogether to other retailers, and said she’s encountered no hurdles so far. Her eight employees are expected to rotate between the brick-and-mortar and online stores.” I want all of them to have experiences with real customers face-to-face,” she said. “It’s very important to give good consulting service.” ShopTogether, she said, helps extend that dynamic to the Web.