There are hundreds of running shoes models and new ones for each season. It is like fashion, you need to follow the trend. Runners are recommended to change shoes every 400 miles so at least 2 to 3 times a year for a normal runner.

So for the choices, there are the minimalists, the cushioned shoes and the Newton. The minimalists are the big trend lately. I love them, have 3 pairs, but I personally do not rely on them for my long runs. Each specialist goes with his own advice. Some believe the cushioned shoes are better for injuries prevention, others believe the contrary. Then there are the Newton which makes you land on your forefoot. Some again believe this is a revolution, some research are also showing that it is not necessarily improving.

What is interesting in all this is that you can really watch a battle going on between the brands. Runner’s World is publishing a user guide each season and speaking about shoes is always a big topic.

The foot being the base for a runner, I do understand the importance of the subject. At least it makes it tricky for us to choose which pair of shoes to pick and makes it even trickier that when you found them, there is a new model coming up.

RoadRunner Sports understood this and based most of his strategy on it. First of all when you enter for the first time in their store, they offer you a free running diagnosis. You jump on a treadmill, you run, they analyze your foot and they create custom soles for you. Of course they then direct you to buy a new pair of shoes that fits with your running type. I tried this but I am not convinced by their soles at all.

Now the wonderful part is that when you go to register, they offer you to become VIP for a small price and what it means is that you have 90 days to try your new shoes on and return them if they do not fit. No matter how much you soiled them. You can run under the rain, in the mud and still return them. You can then choose another one. In addition you will get 10% off all your purchases and an extra 25% on any second, third and following products you will buy. Wonderful! The risk you are taking buying your new pair of shoes is then minimum. I believe this is a great loyalty system.

So now the new season of shoes is coming. Asics will launch their Nimbus 14 in April, Brooks just launched their last Pure Project model. New models, new colors, you want to have always more and spend always more. Who is going to seduce you this time? Who will make you dream that you will realize your best PR this summer? Who will offer you this sensation that you are invincible? Pick yours…

You order fashion designers’ cloths like if you were in a Runway show. The product does not exist, it is going to be created just for you!

The good thing is that products are only created on demand which prevent creating an unnecessary inventory. Only the exact number of products is created so no issue for storing, ordering, depth of inventory…it is creation on demand!

The principle is not extraordinary but it is solving a supply chain issue. With e-commerce, the margins are being reduced and therefore we need to be every day more innovative in order to be profitable. With the cost of free shipping that is eating even more the margin, you can only be profitable if you reduce the maximum number of intermediaries and costs. As I mentioned on my article about Modcloth where they offer the customer to be the buyer, this trend is great for solving one of the biggest cost of retailing.

Word of mouth! It all resides there…What does that mean? Belief and a lot of chance!

The story started back in 1996 when the brand got created. Today, it is everywhere, probably one of the main brands being featured at Dick’s and also one of the brands that big kids tend to like a lot. From basketball shoes to hoodies, the kids have them all.

The Under Armour brand grew mostly by word of mouth, when the founder started distributing his products to several dozen players he knew from his post-high school. Still not enough tho to launch the brand and create a sustainable business. One day it caught a major break when Under Armour was featured in Oliver Stone’s football movie Any Given Sunday.

Today the brand is focusing on innovation and has seen a faster growth than Nike, Puma and Adidas, putting her at the same level as the larger brands. All brands have a stamp and this is one is the one of the warriors.

I looked at this site as a customer but also as an internet professional. It is not Amazon, it is not Target, but Runningwarehouse has it all!

All the relevant functionalities for customers are here: outfitbuilder, product finders, free shipping, paypal billing, brands search, community, videos, international, good product imagery, product attributes, gift cards.

Let’s be a little more critical, the only functionality I would see missing is the live chat.

This is the beauty of HTML5, you can create responsive design templates, which means it adapts to the device on which it is displayed. You build it once and you reuse it on all your devices!

The content stays the same and does adjust to the size of the interfaces. With this method, you can build only one page and it will adjust automatically to the size of a website, ipad and iphone. In the past, we would have created 3 different interfaces.

What it means, is that we now need to think about common patterns across the interfaces. When I wrote What does iPad bring to web design was the beginning of what our interfaces are going to become.

Responsive design is not only good for coding but also for communication, brand management and customer experience as the customer will keep again and again the same image wherever he is. He will truly have his content on the go and will not be disturbed.

When you ask customers what is the most important for them for e-commerce, they respond search first, followed by free shipping.

This is a big challenge for retailers to offer free shipping to their customers and still retain their margin. Indeed this eats up the margin and nobody wants that. However, the customer is tired of paying for shipping, he has the expectation this to be free. Either you eat up the margin or roll it into the original price. With the current fight over pricing on the internet, the second seems difficult. Indeed customers are always looking for the best price and will just look up online which retailer is providing the best price for the same product.

Does that mean that online margins are going to shrink even further? It is likely. I would feel weird for customer to roll up the shipping cost on the product right now. We might be able to do it for new products and overall but it can only happen gradually and partially.

In the customer constant quest to get the best price, free shipping plays a big part of this equation. Free Shipping. Org is updating every day the free shipping offers. Free shipping has become a commodity for customers and retailers do need to understand this.

Jet Blue is redesigning his interface. More fun, easier to navigate and cleaner. Redesigning an interface is not only about colors and visual, it is also about functionalities. How do we make it easier for the customer? How can we decluster the interface to remove what is useless and keep only what is important to the customer.

There are 2 approaches to redesign:

• We keep adding stuff to the site and one day we realize that it is too much to the customer and that he is maybe using only 20% of the proposed functionalities.

• We define a max number of functionalities that we are putting on the site and any new functionality should be more important to the customer to a previous one before going to production.

A sure thing, is that everybody wants always more and more ‘’stuff’’. We slag new functionalities, new buttons, new whatever, until we get a Christmas tree and that customer cannot find what he wants anymore. I am for slick interfaces. The functionality should serve a purpose. However, I am not for keeping the same years over years because habits evolve, market changes and customers expectations are becoming more specific. It is always an interesting decision that we, as management, need to make when it comes to add new features. What is driving it? Innovation: try and see? Customer: I want this? A good blend of this is always necessary and once in a while we all need to go and do a big spring clean up on our interfaces.

Virtual stores are the nice convergence between online and offline. When we are talking about integrated retail, Virtual stores are the perfect solution. Products are displayed on an ad, in the same layout that it would be in a store and thanks to QR codes, customers can buy the products directly with their mobile

When you think about it, it is very powerful and extremely costless. International expansion can therefore be made easier without investing too much money. It is an easy way to test customers interests for new products but also to test news brands in emerging markets. Going international is always very painful because it requires huge investments in addition to heavy legal adjustments. By doing this, we are removing one big barrier to international implementation.

Mobile is the device used by customers to buy products on the go. Research is also showing that customers do buy big ticket items via mobile too. These virtual stores are also located in very strategic locations as usually in areas where customer s do wait (for the metro, the bus, a plane). They do have time and when people have time, they spend money. It is a new experience offered to customers closer to entertainment and better integrated to their daily schedule. Now, you can also add an associate next to the virtual shop and offer special discounts for the launch of a new store so the engagement can even increase. It would be a nice addition as not all customers are yet familiar with this new ‘’way’’ to buy.

We all know how social is trendy lately. Every retailer is currently trying to crack the code on what social would mean for them and the customer. For me the key is: ENGAGEMENT. How can we manage to create an experience that is not asking too much to the customer and that is rewarding to him? Right now the big driver of social is the coupon or the special offer. Indeed, what would trigger somebody to participate to a community is that he will get special offers that no other will get. The challenge is that what do we ask to the customer in return? Of course the value is in content and we do want them to share content and to create new types of content in order to show their belonging to the brand. However one number that all tend to forget is that only less than 5% (I would say 3%) are really creators. The content creation promise is therefore not as huge as expected. How can we therefore still get customers engage and benefit from the experience?

RNKD at this point is not answering the questions. I still feel like most of the retailers are still running in circles to find the solution but do not get it.

I believe that the social component should be fully embedded into the shopping experience. It should not be disruptive, it should be part of what the customer does every day. The social component should build return frequency and engagement. Not immediate engagement in term of content creation but engagement to the brand. Once the customer is engaged then he will be the brand advocate and will be likely to contribute more than the average customer.

Therefore, in my mind the social experience should not be created in separate sites, it should be embedded. It should not require customer to do, but customer to receive. We unfortunately often start with the wrong assumptions or not willing to address the true business need. Creating a product means bringing a value. What is the value for the customer and is what I am asking him to do in exchange interesting to him? The best social and easy feature that is working is ‘’Share’’. Customers are willing to share to get some benefits but I do not believe they are willing to upload videos, photos, create articles and other bunch of things in a large proportion but if each customer does create something it is already a lot.

Customers are willing to ‘’Like’’ within the experience, customers are willing to give feedback within the experience, customers are willing to ‘’share’’ to get rewards.

Zappos does have a site with very powerful customers who are sharing reviews. Also within the site, we can ‘’favorite’’ some brands. So now that I am ‘’fan’’ of a brand why don’t you engage me directly from there and ask me to do ‘’something’’ right there to get a special offer from the brand I like?

I think retailers, not knowing how to crack the code of social, are just timid. They should not be afraid of putting social right in there, where their customers are. The same we offer them reviews, videos, comparison tools, why don’t we offer them social? Because of the fear that some customers might not use it, we prefer to put it in another side and are reluctant from embedding it directly. Do we search on a separate site? Do we checkout on a different site? So why would we engage on a different site?