Online Shopping

This is more of a mental note for myself than anything else but I’m reading an article at the moment that talks about new experiences in online shopping systems and it just occurred to me, Why is it we don’t expose more elements of shopping as RSS feeds and read only services.

Take a weekly ad for example.  You can receive a feed that would constantly feed to users sale or clearance items embedded in a feed with a link back to a retailer.  A steady stream of content that allows a user to choose which information to follow and what not too.

I did browse walmart.com and found a department by department feed of clearance and sales but no general feed which I found to be disappointing.  Usually bargain buyers like myself are looking for any good deal regardless of which department and having the ability to build a custom feed to fit my criteria rather than what Wal-Mart feels appropriate for me to have.

Along with this I think that Amazon.com does a great job of offering great deals etc as well as information in related items, user generated feedback, and 3rd party sellers however its presentation can be extremely cluttered and often unless one wants to search for something they’d have a difficult time just “browsing” what is stock due to the size of inventory that Amazon supports.

Additionally I like the idea of a communal shopping experience much how women currently go shopping in “wolf packs”.  Someone picks an item out and they all merit if the color, size, and fit are good for a woman, otherwise it gets thrown back to the piles.  This concept is very difficult as a straight forward implementation in the current web world.  Various end users cannot login at the same time and share a session between one another and provide real time feedback in either text, voice, video, or a combination of the three.  I suppose I’m giving a million dollar idea out here but this seems like a more natural perspective to shopping that may or may not build a better online presence.