The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported recently that home broadband adoption in the U.S. has reached 84 million (42% of all adults)—up 40% from March 2005. According to comScore Networks, first quarter 2006 ecommerce sales reached $24 billion for non-travel sales—a 22% increase over the previous year’s first quarter sales. At current projections, online spending for 2006 should exceed $100 billion.
What does this mean for online retailers?
Your customers are online, they are spending money and they are increasingly comfortable with the latest technology. As Internet use—particularly broadband use—continues to increase and customers become more web-savvy, they demand a more satisfactory user experience. Awkward navigation, slow page load times and unsuccessful searches discourage Internet shoppers and hinder sales.
What are the challenges?
The e-commerce purchasing processes that most sites still use are limited by their dependence on HTML pages. As more and more products and services are sold online, the “multiple page” e-commerce interface model becomes increasingly cumbersome for the shopper. Page interaction is mostly limited to checkboxes, radio buttons, and form fields. As each page is submitted, information must be sent to the retailer’s servers before the next page can load, further slowing the process.
One Solution: Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)
Rich Internet Applications speed up and simplify the way your customers experience transactions on your web site. They do this, in part, by minimizing traffic back and forth to your servers and consolidating what would have been multiple transaction screens into a single, “layered” screen. Although the functionality still takes place within the customer’s browser, the effect is reminiscent of using installed desktop software.
What are the benefits?
When designed correctly, RIAs can greatly improve user experience, shopping cart conversion rates and customer retention. They can also reduce bandwidth costs and dramatically increase sales. The development tools used to create them are relatively inexpensive, which serves to reduce the cost of developing rich online experiences.
Even though RIAs behave like desktop applications, the user does not need to install any additional software to use them, and they are compatible across different operating systems and browsers. The tools are not yet completely mainstream, but are expected to break through within the next 12-24 months.
The Platforms –Pros and Cons:
Flex (Macromedia Product)
Java /.Net integration
Proprietary Technology (Adobe/Macromedia)
Flex v.1.5 is very limited and slow (compared to v.2.0b).
Flex v.2.0 is far faster and much more robust.
Update is essentially a complete rewrite of the Flex code base—thus v.1.5 sites will likely need to scrapped when moving to v.2.0.
Currently in beta release (Full release in Summer 2006).
Adobe hasn’t announced pricing—server license is likely to be up to $10,000 (possibly higher).
Flex plug-in considerations:Version 2.0 requires Flash Player 8.5—Adobe estimates the install base at 50% (U.S./Canada/Europe).Challenges:
Flash Player install base is higher for homes than businesses.Corporate IT departments are slow to adopt/release new technologies for security and
other reasons.
Doesn’t suffer from browser compatibility issues (like AJAX) provided FP 8.5 is installed—(development & QA cost is reduced).Search engine compatibility
ADA or alternate user compatibility
Tracking (web logs) and analytics
Java/.Net integration
It’s an open technology with multiple integrated development environments (IDEs) in active development/use.
No plug-ins required.
Does not present ADA/search engine/analytics challenges inherent
with Flex.
Suffers from browser compatibility challenges, which require more effort to develop quality assurance test than Flex.
AJAX is free.
AJAX tools are available for purchase under a variety of licenses.
