Back in March, Mashable featured a story about a Midwestern entrepreneur, who is working on setting up his own shoe business on a mobile truck. That food-truck-like concept got us thinking about the future of shoe retail, and the relevance of physical versus online spaces in this digital age of consumer shopping.
When it comes to shoes, Zappos.com remains a major player in the online retail world. The 14-year-old company, now owned by Amazon, has grown to over 3,866 employees. The much-celebrated Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is even planning a revitalization of downtown Las Vegas, the company's soon-to-be new home base. Although Hsieh was not available for an interview, we spoke to Carrie Whitehead of Zappos Labs, the company's San Francisco-based team that works on new experiments.
Zappos Labs has rolled out a number of projects that test new boundaries with online consumers. For example, "Glance" takes Zappos products and creates a curated shopping experience. "PinPointing" recommends products that match Pinterest boards. And "TweetWall" lets users browse products that people are talking about on Twitter.
Carrie Whitehead, Zappos Labs' product and user experience manager, told Mashable about the team's approach, and her thoughts on the future of shopping. Below are snippets of our phone conversation, which were edited for length and readability.
Q&A with Zappos Labs' Carrie Whitehead, Product and UX Manager
What does the Zappos Labs team do?
What we do is we try to look at where the customer is underserved, and we look for opportunities to sort of 'wow' them in new and interesting ways to support those needs that they have.
How does Zappos Labs fit into the overall company?
We're sort of looking at ... a little bit further ahead, what's coming down the road in terms of market trends, industry trends, customer needs and how can we start to create experiences now to meet those needs. So we work very closely with our teams in Las Vegas and certainly want to align with the overall business objectives of the organization.
How do you get insights about your customers to shape the user experience?
We take a very sort of customer-centric approach, and so we always are looking for ways to really understand and develop a relationship with our customers. So a lot of that is just having a really deep understanding of the customer whether that be through research or ... we actually encourage our customers to call us.
That's really valuable to be able to actually talk to them on the phone as well, and just get a good understanding of what their needs are or what needs aren't being met, and sort of go from there. So really always kind of starting with the customer first.
How does the user experience change in a physical space versus online space? Do you see a role in having physical spaces for a place like Zappos in the future?
As the world changes ... how people behave changes, how people shop is changing. So I think in terms of ... the user experience and the customer experience and therefore the UI (user interface), really should be there to support the customer throughout their shopping journey.
That space between physical and online is starting to blur a bit. But I think what it really comes down to is being there for the customer regardless of where they are or when they're shopping. Being able to be there for them and provide for them wherever they want to shop, whenever they want to shop.
That's just an approach we're looking at. What that means exactly, I think, it could mean a lot of things depending on the context of the user.
Traditionally, the experience of buying shoes is something that's so physical: e.g. touch, feel and try on. How do you translate a tangible experience like that into the online digital space?
(By) providing the right content and providing the right level of content. It's writing your descriptions in a way that's useful for the user. It's providing imagery in a way that's useful to the user — so whether it be video content or 360 views or high-resolution imagery — anything that you sort of can provide to allow that user to get a better understanding of what the product is. We look at all of those different ways to provide different types of content depending on the product, depending on where they are sort of in the shopping journey and what they're looking for.
It's all about context, right? You don't want to sort of overwhelm the user with information in part of the journey where they don't need it. But we want to provide it where they do.
What are your thoughts on retail trucks, like the shoe-truck startup we wrote about?
It's a fun trend ... I think it's really great to see more and more people starting to do that, whether it be entrepreneurs or larger retailers. It's oftentimes a more cost-effective way for people to get started in this space, which can in some cases springboard them into online-retailer storefronts, which is exciting. It allows retailers to test new markets. It brings the product to the customer.
Being there for the customer, where and when they want to shop — it's great for that. You can get your products into high-volume areas, if that's something you weren't able to do before. It's an interesting space to watch ... there's a lot going on.
Does a company like Zappos see it relevant to have a physical space? Or is it more about focusing on digital and mobile?
I think whether or not we would go that route in the future, I can't answer that today. But I think that what we're doing is we're taking a broader sort of look at what's going on and what customers are doing and what their behaviors are as they shop, and then looking at where it makes sense for us to grow our business or try new things to support that.
We're very invested in downtown Las Vegas, and we're always looking at opportunities to create these amazing experiences for customers locally there as well.
We're very much looking at the broader picture of shopping and looking at where we can support our customers.
Imagine the shoe customer of the year 2020 or 2030. What do you think that shopping experience is going to look like?
I think retail will just continue to get more personal, whether it be through sort of machine-learning or expert-curation or friends and family. It will be a more personal experience and customers are going to be able to shop wherever and whenever they want.
Really everything can be seen as an interface. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for what's coming down the road. If you really sort of take that broader picture of that holistic customer experience, and on top of that, you apply that idea that everything's an interface. We can allow the customer to shop where and when they want to, and provide, really what's right for them. So I think it's exciting.
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You can follow the happenings of Zappos Labs in San Francisco on Twitter.
What do you think the future of shopping will look like? Will we be doing all our shopping online, or will brick-and-mortar stores still be around? Share your predictions in the comments.
Images courtesy of Zappos.com.
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