Digital and retail are like chocolate and peanut butter. Each is excellent on its own, but they definitely rise to a whole new level of delicious effectiveness when brought together.
So we’re always on the lookout for examples of this effective combination. Yearbook Yourself is one such example. You start by uploading your headshot and then watching as you are transformed to a hilarious alter-ego. You see yourself as you would look in each of 50 different time periods between 1950 to 2000. You get a new (possibly feathered) hair-do along with snappy new clothes with lots of mismatched patterns.
Where the peanut-buttery goodness of retail appears is when Yearbook Yourself provides links to websites of retailers in your local shopping mall (which you select at the beginning). These shopping links allow you to instantly buy a turtleneck you just saw and think is cool again, or visit your favorite retailer to buy at a later date. Simple, engaging, viral, highly relevant, and measurable as well.
Many websites do a great job at providing engaging user experiences via games, voting, user submissions, downloads, etc. However, these sites often don’t perform that next essential task of driving consumers to retail using an incentive or even an engaging store locater tool. An effective digital experience should provide a clear, compelling next step for consumers to move to their preferred retail environment (online or offline) and make a purchase. Engagement is good. But a sale is even better.
– Contributed by Ken Barber
