By Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner
2/5/2008
Last week I attended part of Internet Retailer’s Web Design Conference in Miami. I had the opportunity to hear Debbie Kristofferson, VP of Creative and User Experience for Walmart.com and others speak to hundreds of retailers about what’s hot in web site design.
Ms. Kristofferson talked quite extensively about Walmart.com’s most recent web site redesign and how important it was to create a sense of community. Wal-Mart’s research revealed that community was best manifested by offering consumers the opportunity to write product reviews, and give loyal customers a voice on the site.
Bowling Alone
Her speech got me thinking. In 2001, my friend Dr. Henry Abraham told me about a fascinating book: “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam. Putnam, like many social theorists, picked one area of society as metaphor to describe an overarching phenomenon. Dr. Putnam's metaphor? Bowling. He observed that over the previous 25 years, while the number of people bowling had actually risen, the number of people bowling in leagues had declined. He cites other statistics to show how the United States has become an ever more isolated collection of individuals, rather than a collection of groups. Palmer believes that the social capital of society – “the fabric of our connections with each other” – is as important as its other form of capital, and that social capital was declining precipitously.
All of us who live in the US (and I acknowledge that many of our readers do NOT) recognize our lives in this remark. We seem to have more gravitas, less fun and fewer social gatherings than before, and we work in cubicles in front of our computers, following an endless quest for productivity. We vacation less, work more, and most of us are focused on just making financial ends meet.
Social Networking Drives Social Capital
Putnam had many suggestions on fixing this problem, and even co-wrote a follow-on book “Better Together,” with prescriptions for improvements. But something surprising has happened: Social Networking. This phenomenon has created global and local communities of interest.
People who otherwise are isolated have found their voices online. They participate in product reviews, are fearless in challenging those faceless corporations who they feel might have wronged them, and cheerfully join myspace, Linked In, Facebook, Second Life and other communities of interest.
Of course there are those who feel the social networking phenomenon is a poor proxy for direct human interaction. It’s true that my Second Life personality, Masuite Loon, is 20 years younger, lots thinner and dresses way better than I do in real life. But the connections I make around the web in all my incarnations are deep and real. In fact, our company, RSR, had our first face to face meeting EVER at NRF’s Big Show. Yet these are people I feel as close to as any I’ve ever worked with. If there was a scale of Social Capital, I’d say we’ve generated a lot. And we know each others’ real names and what we really look like.
An Opportunity for Retailers and Another Twist on Customer-Centricity
By now I’ll bet you’ve figured out I was a sociology major in college, and love social theory… but I’m a retailer too, and I see a convergence. Social networking on ecommerce sites is more than just a tool to extract more money from customers. It also fills a valuable gap. Just as a physical community gathers in a coffee bar in Athens to discuss the issues of the day, a virtual community can gather at places like Walmart.com to discuss issues pertinent to that location – i.e. the quality and experience derived from the products being sold.
So, what’s the bottom line? Good web site design must include a method and means to review products: a vehicle for connection between otherwise disconnected individuals. It’s not a perfect replacement and it’s not going to solve all our issues of isolation, but it will build customer loyalty. I’ll resist the temptation to digress into a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” here, and just leave it simple. Build a space for your community of customers to meet. It’s a win-win situation. Walmart.com has got it right. Community is attractive. We may still bowl alone, but we can rate the Wii’s bowling game all together.
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