High Heeled Shoes?! Contextual Analytics and the Death of Search

I have lost a little weight recently and found myself in dire need of clothes that fit. Turns out my neck size has shrunk by an inch….an inch! As with most men of a certain age, I strolled my browser to Nordstrom’s to pick-up a couple of trusty, boring white dress shirts. Within a few clicks, I had tossed a couple of shirts in my shopping cart, and then decided to shop more. I mean, why not? I needed a new belt and slacks that fit, too.

So I popped back into the main site to shop, and to my surprise I was targeted with an amazing sale on women’s high heeled shoes. Yep, women’s shoes. Are you kidding?! I am shopping in the men’s section of the site — I even place a couple of men’s shirts into my shopping cart — and I get a promotion for women’s shoes. Nordstrom had the opportunity of having a simple conversation with me. They knew my context — heck, they even had my new neck size. So, why not assault me with an ad for a new belt? Smaller slacks? or Cufflinks to go with my French cuff shirts?

This is a classic issue facing companies today. As I surf the web with an air of focused defiance, I actually pivot from my trance; I take a detour; and I reach out to a company to have an interaction. And, in this case, Nordstrom wasn’t ready. They blew it. These are precisely the critical marketing moments that companies MUST be prepared for, if they are going to be successful marketing on line. If they squander the opportunity to have a customer conversation, they risk losing revenue or worse a customer.

I visited the windy city this week in between blizzards and met with Brad from Sapient. He had a great perspective on this topic. I loved his phrase: “analytics is the new creative”. And I couldn’t agree more. For Norstrom’s, it’s not about print advertising or making their images in their catalog look spiffy. They need the analytics to know who I am when I come knocking at their website door. Equipped with that data, they then need to anticipate my needs. Forward leaning companies are obsessed with analytics to drive customer segmentation, learning about the ‘context’ of their on-line customers: who are they, where are they coming from, what can I glean from their context to motivate them to buy something or to simply engage.

Context is the soul of the customer experience movement. As companies begin to harness the customer context, it is not too farfetched to imagine the general decline in the usage of website search to navigate and find what we are seeking. Think about it for a second. If Nordstrom knew me — if they had the right context with deep analytics — why couldn’t they have offered me a whole new wardrobe (shirts, slacks, belt, etc..)? The customer context is how a company begins the on line conversation.

{Someone just reminded me that over 50% of men’s clothing which is purchased on-line is by women – or, more accurately, men’s wives. But assuming this is true, I really don’t want Nordstrom distracting my wife when she is buying clothes for me by trying to seduce her with ridiculous promotions for new shoes. As if, I need more women’s shoes in my house! But maybe this line of thinking broaches on the role of user ‘sentiment’ in the customer experience. Hmmm….maybe a topic for a new blog post.}