December 2008
1 post
Hey Now - I've Started A New Blog
Come on over!
www.melissabernais.com/blog
July 2008
2 posts
Bergdorf Goodman Doesn't You To Buy Clothes
Or, they’re making it a harder for you to give them your money then it should be. Bergdorf’s site structure makes use of the old school trick of using a non-web experience to organize and present content online (ie. the omni-present tabs in a notebook structure), thinking that it will be relatable, and easy to use.
In this case, BergdorfGoodman.com’s navigation/organization...
RevolveClothing.com And Images on their Shelf...
Revolve uses shelf pages as resourceful and powerful work horses; like a lot of retail sites, they provide filters for sizing and colour, and sorts for price, category, popularity and newest item added.
A really interesting point of difference, however, is they way they’re elevating the multiple product shot image collection from the product page to the shelf. Though the controls for...
June 2008
4 posts
Top Level Domains Expanding
Via One Degree (http://www.onedegree.ca/2008/06/yournamehere-ch.html).
“ICANN, the international body that regulates domain naming, announced their unanimous vote to open up restrictions on top level domains (TLDs). Starting in Q2 2009, it will be possible to apply to have just about anything as a TLD.
…
Brand names can be used as extensions. Think of .coke .nike .ebay
You can...
When Does Making a Customer Feel Special Turn into...
When you create a combined online shop / social network that requires (a) registration in order to see the products in the shop half of things, and (b) is invite only.
Welcome to Totokaelo.
For Totokaelo, creating this air of exclusivity may be right in line with their business model. Before walking down this kind of road, however, I would caution that you make sure that it really does...
Engaging the Bloggers
Loud Truck Energy Gummies has an interesting on-going social media campaign; blog about your love for their Loud Truck, tell them about it, and they send you free product.
While blogging has been the go-to user-generated testimonial space for the past couple of years, I’d love to see companies like Loud Truck embrace other spaces as well; Facebook, Twitter, they’re all quite...
American Apparel takes to EBay to Hawk Vintage...
It’s true!
American Apparel - California Select, Vintage and More
These vintage and one of a kind pieces can only be purchased at select retail locations, or via their EBay store.
What an interesting way to address possible stock and one-of-a-kind item issues! As well, using the EBay storefront model allows for a PayPal-based e-commerce experience; for a demographic where credit...
May 2008
9 posts
So, Nylon and MySpace Go on a Date
To a rockshow, of course. It is the music issue, after all. The result? From the cover: Inside, each article ends with a MySpace link, or three, leading to pages of the musician or artist or store mentioned in the article, and, sometimes, more interestingly, the musician that served as inspiration. Iggy and the Stooges lead to shimmery jeans. It’s true! Finally, Nylon has a pretty...
YourSole.com Follows Up
This was in my inbox this morning. From my initial purchase experience to the online follow-up by Andrew on the posting, to this? It may just be an insole company, but they’re thinking about their online and offline presence in a way that a lot of retailers can’t even imagine.
Hey, Give Us Some of that Social Network Stuff!
Wet Seal is getting in on the game by creating their own Wet Seal Community.
When do you think the Interwebs will finally reach it’s breaking point? How many communities can be created, flourish and become sustainable?
Before commiting to creating your own social network, think about what value-add you’re giving your customers by building something from scratch. Will they...
Mobile and Social Networking
eMarketer, taking stats from Nielson Mobile, published Mobile Social Networking Big in US, UK today. In the article, they publish percentages for the number of mobile subscribers that have accessed a social network from their device. I think the more interesting number would be how many social network subscribers have accessed their SNs from a mobile device.
The Girlification of the Interwebs
Sometimes, I don’t know whether to feel empowered (see Jezebel, thought I have an equal love for Gawker) or suckerpunched (see Shine) by sites and services made specifically for women. So let’s turn our attention to the latest that’s come to my attention: Kirtsy (nee Sk*rt before being sued by Skirt Magazine) perports to be a more female friendly Digg-like service.
Now,...
Google Friend Connect
With so much being made of data portability and social networking in the last couple of weeks, is anyone surprised the Google is also on the case? Google Friend Connect: “Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social. But the barriers to offering social applications on the site have been considerable. Google Friend Connect changes this by enabling any site to offer...
Brandtags.net and Coolspotters.com
Both of these sites were brought to my attention by Andrea Hill. Brandtags.net is an interesting experiement / look into how people have tagged a number of brands. You can either contribute, or look at tag summaries for brands the site has collected. Oh, tag clouds. Coolspotters.com is a social network of a sort. Members take images of celebrities and identify the stuff that they’re...
MySpace Begins to Open Up
Excerpts from the Globe & Mail article: MySpace, Partner Sites form Greater Links …Users looking to update personal information on their MySpace profile will now be able to dynamically share that data with other websites, including Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter. …Once the service is up and running, users will be able to update information on their MySpace profile pictures,...
Lovely, Arty Interaction on a Landing Page
Link: The Art of David Flores Visit and see if I was lying.
April 2008
16 posts
This One is Going Out to All the Beautiful...
Trendpedia - http://trendpedia.com/ “ABOUT TRENDPEDIA Trendpedia is your free entry in to what’s Buzz in the Blog-o-sphere. Search blogs — discover who’s discussing what, where, when and how. Trendpedia finds trends in social media. You choose the topics, enter the keywords, and click “Search Trend”. Trendpedia finds the articles online that talk about your topics. Trendpedia...
Retail Add-On Services, a la FashionChateau.com
Interesting how service is returning as a differentiator, isn’t it? http://www.fashionchateau.com
Mobile Devices Save Money
I don’t know how many of you were the recipeint of my monologue about how awesome it would be to take along a mobile device to price check in stores. Well, someone else has done just that, and blogged about it.
http://www.geeksugar.com/
How My iPhone Saved Me Money on Shoes
Do you remember those reports last year of certain stores using a secret intranet that reflected different prices...
Singer22 Wants You to Share Too
ShopBop wants You to Share
Twitter Saves American Arrested In Egypt
Mercury News via Gawker. When a Berkeley grad student was jailed in Egypt for taking photos of a demonstration, he Twittered the word “ARRESTED.” His Twitter followers (Egyptian bloggers and American friends) called the college, the US Embassy, and the international press, and the police soon released him. Of course theoretically he could have just called someone, but that...
YourSole.com One Page Checkout
So I gots me high arches and an over-pronation problem. And though I don’t exactly NEED a new pair of custom orthotics, I’ve been thinking about it, because the switching out between shoes is a pain. Anyway, yesterday my brother emailed me about YourSole.com. I placed an order. And I was asked to interact with a one-page checkout - in all of my online purchases, this was a first for...
LifeAt - A Social Networking Platform for...
Well, building residents. From LifeAt: “LifeAt creates private, password protected websites for exclusive use by members of residential communities. Residents use LifeAt sites to communicate with neighbors; post classifieds; and rate and review local retailers, restaurants, & delivery services. Property managers and building developers use the...
Yahoo! To Introduce Voice Enabled Search
Yahoo! To Introduce Voice Enabled Search via Geeksugar Yahoo! is set to launch to a voice-activated search service for cell phone users called oneSearch. Basically if you need to access a search engine like Google or Yahoo! search you can say it into your phone and then say a command for what you would like to search the web for. Yahoo! has already joined forces with dozens of operators around the...
Julie Krakowski - An Interesting Way to Present a...
Julie Krakowski is an amazing textile artist. I’m especially fond of her Coffee and Cigarettes collection. She describes her work: “Work based on the marks left by everyday life, the little accidents such as cigarette burns and food stains. Even though the stain acts as a decoration, you can always see traces of the «fault». It accentuates the importance of the random and the...
Logobama
You know, I really like how political bodies and the people who believe in them are getting involved with the interwebs. Logobama, a site created by Obama supporters, allows you to create your own versions of the Obama logo, and upload to their moderated Flickr collection.
March 2008
5 posts
SizeMeUp - Taking on an Industry through User...
I think we’re all frustrated with how inconsistant clothing sizing is across brands. And since the industry seems to be doing everything that it can to ignore the issue, someone finally decided to do something about it. SizeMeUp has created a service that calls on anyone who wishes to participate to head on into their closets and give information about the sizing of what’s in there. ...
Nordstrom Hits the Social Networks
Saks goes video, and Nordstrom starts playing on Facebook and MySpace. Nordstrom’s MySpace page Nordstrom’s Facebook “Fashion Status” applicationThe first is a page for their BP line, and the second is an app that encourages you to share what you’re wearing, purchased via Nordstrom, of course.
Down For Everyone...Or Just For Me?
Here’s an ingenius site that will tell you just that: Down for Everyone or Just For Me?
Saks Goes Video for their New Catalog
Following last week’s discussion about Martin and Osa, it’s interesting to see the whole idea of clothing in motion at online retailers seemingly exploding. Check it out: Sak’s New Catalog