Most e-commerce products are "me-too" items,
offering the same level of functionality as the competition.
It seems that in trying to invent a better
mousetrap, companies don''t always succeed. This is especially true when the better mousetrap deviates significantly from accepted standards and raises doubts among reviewers and implementers.
This appears to be the case with QuickBuy Shopper, a combination shopping cart and wallet from QuickBuy
(formerly NetWaveInc), that connects with e-commerce servers using QuickBuy
Builder. QuickBuy Shopper is a client-side application that sits outside of the Web browser and serves initially as a shopping cart.
When shoppers connect to a QuickBuy-enabled site, they will see Buycons associated items for sale. Buycons or Buyable Icons contain product information, such as product description,
price, SKU, and color. Buycons can be dragged and dropped by users to the QuickBuy Shopper client, which tracks purchases as a shopping card. In addition, consumers can e-mail Buycons to friends,
who can make immediate purchases without visiting the merchants Web site.
Once the shopper is ready to finalize the purchase, the QuickBuy Shopper client then acts as a wallet, passing on consumer information, such as shipping address and credit-card information to the QuickBuy-enabled Web site.
In addition, QuickBuy works as a shopping cart across QuickBuy-enabled Web
sites. Customers can move to other stores and retain the items selected in another QuickBuy-enabled Web site. In theory, this means that customers can browse for items until they find specifically what they want at the lowest price. While the company may see this as a plus, most e-commerce sites probably don''t want that type of high-level comparison shopping, given the current e-commerce trend of making sites as "sticky" as possible. In addition, QuickBuy Shopper can also track
favorite items without actually enabling a purchase.
QuickBuy Shopper also acts as a push
client, receiving data from QuickBuy-enabled vendors, including sales and promotions notices. Push has largely receded from the Internet
mindspace -- remember when push servers from the likes of Marimba and PointCast
were going to rule the world? But in the QuickBuy scheme of things, push is a very appropriate tool
for communicating with customers.
There are two issues surrounding QuickBuy Shopper: will enough customers
download and install QuickBuy
Shopper to make it a viable standard for shopping, and whether enough Web sites
will adopt QuickBuy technology
to make the platform a viable standard for vendors.
Smaller businesses (those with e-commerce sites with fewer than 100
SKUs) can download QuickBuy
Builder. The Pro version, a Windows 95/98/NT application, can be downloaded
from the QuickBuy Web site
and be used to add QuickBuy capabilities to their own sites. Since this
product is integrated into NetObjects
Fusion 4.0, it can easily be incorporated into most sites via NetObjects
Fusion. E-commerce vendors can
also tie into the QuickBuy site and implement Buycons.
Also available for small businesses is QuickBuy Broadcaster, which adds push capabilities to a QuickBuy-enabled Web site.
QuickBuy Broadcaster is a fairly sophisticated push server, allowing
broadcasters to target content to specific
types of customers.
QuickBuy Builder is offered on a subscription level, with pricing between
$10 and $30 per month, depending
on the transaction level.
Larger sites will want to look at QuickBuy Server, which works with most
Windows NT and Solaris Web server that combines the capabilities of QuickBuy Builder and QuickBuy
Broadcaster on a larger scale (that is, sites with more than 100 SKUs). It sits between a Web server and an ODBC/ODQL database and generates Buycons with product information stored in the database. After a purchase, QuickBuy Server communicates with a payment-processing service to manage the credit-card transaction.
Be warned that QuickBuy Builder and QuickBuy Server are not yet available to
a wider audience at this time. QuickBuy Builder will be available for download and QuickBuy Server will be sold on an OEM basis.
Buycons are a cool concept in the relatively staid e-commerce world and have
the potential of taking shopping
to the next level in terms of server functionality and user ease. We''re
awarding QuickBuy three stars based on
its potential -- and it''s definitely worth watching as it appears this
year.
Pros: Buycons are an efficient way of transmitting product
information; combination of shopping cart, push
client, and wallet should appeal to users.
Cons: Server-side products not yet available, requires a
commitment to QuickBuy technologies as opposed to
a more open technology; performance can''t be evaluated yet.
Reviewed by: Kevin
Reichard
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
