The wishlist I wish I had
June 26, 2007 - Matt MacGillivray - comments (0)
Last week, I wrote about usability through my experience at a local coffee shop. One of the comments recommended a book, so I bookmarked it with delicious and will probably forget about it in a few days because delicious (or any bookmarking service) is more for reference when I'm in a bind than a reminder to go pick something up. It solves the bookmarking problem, but it's passive, not active, so it doesn't necessarily suit the 'wishlist' scenario.
Later on, I stumbled upon a post referencing a list of social wishlists, a post about an 'add to facebook' widget at chapters.indigo.ca and had PowerReviews/Buzzillions on my mind. The wheels started spinning and I thought - what would make my shopping experience better? My experience would be enhanced if there was a centralized wishlist functionality in every store.
 What would it do?
- Provide a centralized wishlist - like Kaboodle, ProductWiki, etc. A single place to manage my entire wishlist. The centralized list would tell me where and when I found the product.
- Remind me of my wishlist. At some defined interval, remind me of what I have in my wishlist - send it bi-weekly in an email. I should be able to schedule specific reminders, for example - I found an awesome card for my brother online 6 months before his birthday, but totally forgot about it when the time came around.
- When I add something to my cart at a store, add it to my wishlist. Abandoned carts are no more for authenticated users. There is probably a neat way to solve this for unauthenticated users.. I'll stew on that.
- Inverse of #3. When I revisit a site, the cart should be re-populated based on my wishlist.
- When re-populating my cart, maybe the site sees some of the other related items in my wishlist and if they carry the same product, the site also adds them to my cart.
- When viewing my wishlist, it tells me the site I bookmarked it on, and other sites that sell the same product.
- It would accept product updates. Maybe vendors can communicate with the centralized wishlist using RSS (really simple syndication) to send updates to product descriptions, quantity information, price updates, etc.
What advantages are there for the consumer?
- I have a wishlist that I can use across multiple websites, is easy to use, and provides me with some stellar value through reminders, product updates, and other features.
- It's better than the 'bookmark and forget' system I have perfected with delicious.
What advantages are there for the vendor?
- Vendors can see what I want. There could be privacy issues here, but I share my bookmarks anyways, so what's the difference?
- Vendors can push sales to me directly. They know what I want, I will see relevant information as a result.
- Vendors can see what the most popular items are - what does everyone have in their wishlist right now? What is the most popular store?
- Vendors get exposure. By offering a particular product, you get exposure to everyone who has that item in their wishlist.
What advantages are there in general?
- It would be awesome if RSPS were developed as a result (really simple product syndication).
- Maybe it would lead to virtual stores that sell a collection of products from many vendors? The store is made up of product feeds (see RSPS), and some way of paying for them all together. Amazon's Seller Central offers similar functionality to this now, by way of allowing customers to list items for sale on their site, so this isn't a new concept, but I'm stretching it the other way - allow small shops to sell products from any company. A consumer cross-dock sorta setup. That would be cool.
It's a pipe dream, I know. But it would be straightforward to implement, not hard to sell to vendors, and would really make my life easier as a consumer. Until then, I will suffer with my patented delicious 'bookmark and forget' system.
Note: By the end of this post, I had forgotten about the book recommendation completely.
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