Shop 'Til You Drop; Offer a Visual Mobile Shopping Experience

Allison Howen
by Allison Howen 17 Mar, 2015

Ecommerce software provider Edgecase is making it easier for mobile users to shop until they drop, unveiling a new solution that simplifies product discovery on the small screen.

The Visual Shopping offering, enables online retailers to provide mobile shoppers with a visual and intuitive product discovery experience that may feel more like an app than a website. Retailers can leverage the solution to offer a personalized 'Pinterest-like' shopping experience within the mobile browser, and in so doing, display relevant products to shoppers (who not only have the ability to make a purchase, but also to save, share or continue to browse).

It is important to note that Visual Shopping uses shopper-friendly attributes to deliver relevant products to consumers. Moreover, the solution adapts and learns as shoppers continue to interact, click and tap their way to a more relevant selection of products. Through the solution, shoppers can select "more like this" on an item to begin a visual journey through the product catalog. Plus, no matter what action a shopper has taken, the Visual Shopping platform ensures that shoppers can always click, scroll or tap to another item or action, eliminating dead ends.

"The technology is meant to empower shoppers to shop with their eyes," said Lisa Roberts, VP of Marketing at Edgecase. "So rather than having to shop by typing searches with the tips of your finger or having to pinch open pages so you can get to that little link that's going to take you to something that is slightly closer to what you are looking for, it's really allowing (customers) to use their eyes to browse and look for what is relevant and resonates with them."

Among the first companies to leverage the Visual Shopping solution is popular beauty retailer Urban Decay. According to Urban Decay AVP Katherine LaFranchise, the Visual Shopping solution helps deliver an engaging experience to its customer base, which tends to be very visual and predominately mobile. In fact, early results show that shoppers who interacted with Visual Shopping were more likely to engage, participate and purchase from the brand, with a 5x increase in products viewed per session, a nearly 10 percent increase of shoppers sharing products with others and a 150 percent higher conversion rate.

"Our customers are highly visual beauty fans who turn to Pinterest and Instagram for inspiration," said Katherine LaFranchise, AVP, Urban Decay. "Edgecase's Visual Shopping offering allows us to provide a mobile browsing experience that is similar to these apps, with a layer of intelligence to show shoppers what they are looking for, even if they can't name it themselves. This is an amazing value proposition, and our early results are exceeding expectations."