Social Commerce as part of ‘Distributed Commerce’ through APIs »

There’s been some buzz about ‘social commerce’ this year, with a great WSJ article a couple weeks back: Retailers Embrace Social Commerce.

However, there’s not really such a thing as ‘social commerce’.

What these companies are doing is executing a ‘distributed commerce’ strategy.To really understand this profound shifft, it's worth watchign Sam Ramji's talk on  evolving business models in his Web 2.0 Strategy presentation: Darwin’s Finches, 20th Century Business and APIs.
 
A key point in this talk is how business is migrating from a direct to indirect model. 

The web revolution that gave birth to Amazon and eBay was based on a shift to a direct business model… retailers selling directly via their websites. 

Today businesses are figuring out how to execute an indirect model.  They are trying to put their product/service/content where their customers are. 

To use some retail-speak, the nuance is that commerce is now about more than about 'selling in' a channel, it is about selling ‘through’ a channel.

So where are customers?

Increasingly, consumers are on the move and on their smart phones.  They are on tablet computers like the iPad and on game consoles (xbox, ps3) and set-top boxes (roku, etc), and filling their car at gas stations. 

Consumers are also spending time on social networks… which brings us back to ‘social commerce’.

Borrowing Sam’s Finches metaphor, retailers are exploring their ‘niches’… reaching out into the places where customers are, and selling in that context.

So a Facebook store is just one niche, one place to reach customers where they are.   Gamestop is another retailer with a Facebook store.  However, Gamestop is also on mobile device apps and other social networks.  They are executing a distributed commerce strategy well.  In the same issue as the social commerce article, WSJ reported that Gamestop’s profit rose 6.9% on higher sales.

Another example of distributed commerce is Shopsavvy, a mobile app that searches for products based on location and brings back pricing, availability and product attributes.  Retailers want to be included in the shopsavvy app to have their products discovered by consumers in that venue.  Shopsavvy itself is exposing its engine to developers who are finding niches of consumers via wine-specific apps, “Lego apps”, etc

In the post-web world, forward-thinking retailers are executing distributed commerce strategies to reach consumers where they are, including on social networks. Where are your customers?  And what is your distributed commerce strategy to reach them?

Winning with APIs and the Advent of the NFL’s West Coast Offense »

Joe Montana and Bill Walsh made it legendary in the 1980s, and today The West Coast Offense still stands as one of the most successful and innovative strategies in the history of football. We've talked about what football has to do with APIs on the blog before. On January 27th at 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm PT, we're holding a free webinar in partnership with Credera to explore this topic more. 

The West Coast Offense leveraged existing assets in new ways to bring its players fame and fortune, much like today's retail and ecommerce companies are innovating to win with APIs. This webinar will give an introduction to using APIs to reach new channels and device platforms, generate revenue through partnerships, stimulate third-party innovation, super-charge affiliate strategies and succeed in the new mobile, multichannel web. And of course - what football has to do with it all. You can register here. 

We'll discuss: 

• What is an API and what it means for your business team and your tech team 
• API champions and case studies of companies succeeding with APIs in the new web economy
• Reaching the mobile and multichannel web by opening up to partners, developers and affiliates 
• Driving third-party innovation and rapid development with a successful API strategy 
• Building an API roadmap from concept to implementation
• Device strategies for reaching the thousands of new mobile and connected device platforms  
• Combining mobile, social and ecommerce to turbocharge your business 
• Leveraging existing assets to find new revenue sources and impact your bottom line with APIs

Hit us a note on Twitter with your questions! 

APIs and the Advent of the West Coast Offense »

Sundays in the fall are fantastic. Why? The NFL and APIs are making it fun to watch football games with enhanced information for all my fantasy football players. I can sit in front of the TV with my iPad and follow all the scoring and updates. Some day soon my TV will have apps that access the precious player statistic APIs.  

This got me thinking about how APIs will change the way we live, utilize our assets (like TVs) and measure success. In the football analogy, I immediately thought of two people that did the same for the NFL- Bill Walsh and Joe Montana. Although Bernie Kosar is credited for popularizing the term "West Coast Offense," Walsh and Montana executed the new offense and changed the game forever.

Retail 2.0 and Football 

The West Coast Offense changed the utilization of the game's legacy assets: a leather football, a 100 yard field, established rules, and 11 elite athletes. The new offense focused on the passing game and emerged in the 1980s when the NFL was dominated by the run game. In 1979 the San Francisco 49ers drafted Joe Montana in the 3rd round (82nd overall); when all was said and done he won 4 Superbowls and broke almost every passing record to date - no one could touch the 49ers. However, this was all done with a largely unproven strategy that remixed the game and emerged as innovation.

Where am I going with this? Well in today's world of retail and ecommerce, the Walsh and Montana are the Amazons, Twitters and Facebooks. You might not think of these companies as analogous, or even competitive- but they are coming to your field. They are setting the standards for commerce, integration and brand interaction.  They've got a strategy to proliferate and dominate - and it's through APIs.  

If your company doesn't have an API strategy you'll face a passing game that your run game can't keep up with.  It's projected that there will be 1 trillion connected devices in 2020. How will they connect to your enterprise?  APIs. Why? Because the players that are remaking the game are using them at a rate of billions of transactions a day and they are winning the Superbowl. Product companies are creating their foundations in APIs, from your iPhone to your TV. APIs are one of the greatest integration points in the history of computing.

Getting in Shape for the Season 

There are several approaches to implementing an API as the ultimate integration point. The goal is to extend your enterprise's assets to more consumers, devices and partners; it becomes a system integration effort rather than a new application development effort. You're not really building new systems as much as you are creating an integration layer, "the cartilage," between the consumers and your internal systems.  

You might also provide some aggregation functionality. For example, when someone uses your API to request inventory, you can aggregate multiple sources of inventory, providing a single unified view to the consumer. Again, you are hiding the complexities and details of your internal systems behind a simpler, coarser gained API. Think of the consumers, devices and partners of the API as wide receivers that are running down the field towards the end-zone.  

End game? You'll score faster and more often with an API in the future.

Crossing the Streams is Good: New Opportunities for Retail in Geolocation and Mobile »

I'm a big movie fan so when I set out to write about the power of API partnerships for retailers I recalled a scene in Ghostbusters where the boys cross the streams of their "unlicensed nuclear accelerators" and unlocked new potential. Application Programming Interfaces are like those streams. When one or more are used together they unlock new ways to serve customers.  

New APIs are coming on to the scene daily. Remember that APIs are code that help systems connect and communicate with each other over the internet.  Some of the early retailers to adopt open APIs are Amazon, eBay, Sears, and Tesco. These retailers are exposing their product catalogs via an API and allowing partners to develop solutions (apps, websites, etc) with those APIs. This allows the retailer to reach more customers through these partnerships and affiliations.  

Let's explore the opposite situation. What APIs are out there that a retailer can consume for the benefit of their customer? Mobile applications and mobile marketing are certainly on the top of many retailer's strategic lists. Mobile apps are great but store locators and product catalogs are becoming a big yawn. What else is there? How about an API for location-aware promotions? Combined with a mobile app or SMS marketing campaign these APIs streams can cross and become huge weapons in the competitive battlefield. Imagine luring a customer to a store with a special promotion right as they're about to walk in to a competitor's location. 

Location-aware APIs combined with a smartphone's GPS API, combined with a retailers store locator API.... mix it together and bang out a new way to reach more customers. There are several location-aware APIs out there like Google, FourSquare, Locomatix and SimpleGeo. And don't forget about social APIs. Adding social functionality, like that available in APIs like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, creates the "perfect storm" of mobile, geo and social to let your customers not only get what they want, when they want it, where they want it, but engage and share with their social network around your platform- expanding your reach even further. 

There are some other interesting prospects emerging. Recently there was a startup that unveiled a mobile payment solution that doesn't require hardware changes or software changes at the point of sale. It's called MobilePayUSA. Imagine combining that functionality along with a retailer's product catalog and a recommendation API like ProductWiki. Now you've got a customer in the store that can browse the store and online catalogs on their mobile device, get reviews of products and pay for them - again those are some powerful steams being crossed. The most important streams might already exist in an enterprise. We'll explore what happens when those streams are crossed in the next post.

Where will your customers be this Christmas? »

Keith Morrow has a great article on TechTarget series on how an API can create a disruptive impact on a retailer's ability to reach customers beyond traditional web browser channels.

One key point is that an API can be driven by a relatively small team. 

Yet an API has a disproportionate impact on the business, and this impact scales with low marginal costs.  

This can be an especially effective strategy for retailers that might live in world of thin margins, limited resources, and the constant pressure of the peak holiday season. 

For more on Keith's retail API experience, we commissioned him to write a Retail 2.0 API Strategy whitepaper discussing Retail API opportunities, challenges of launching with tight resources, and best practices.

You can download the whitepaper here.