How Close Are We To Seamless Digital Commerce?
By Matt Pillar, chief editor
For all the “smarts” of our smart devices—think phones, tablets, and TVs—our consumption of digital content and our digital interaction with brands and our peers still happen in a surprisingly disjointed way.
My bemused interest in this year’s political landscape offers a pointed example of the disparity I’m referring to. During the recently-wrapped primary debate season, I found myself at once watching the debates on my television and using my smartphone to monitor the near-real-time public reaction to the debates on social media. It was a cumbersome exercise—my eyes and mind toggling between the TV screen and the entertaining commentary unfolding on Twitter.
I could watch the debates on the small screen of my device, but enjoying the wit and wisdom of the crowd on Twitter would require bouncing between two separate apps. And of course, there are applications for Twitter on TV, but I’m not sure my TV is smart enough to leverage them. Should I choose to contribute to the social dialog, doing so via the little buttons on my remote doesn’t appeal to me at all.
What if smart televisions made the interaction more seamless? And what if that seamlessness extended to retail commerce?
A recent conversation with Messiah Jacobs, founder of an inventive video commerce startup called tapReplay, brought the retail value of eliminating this kind of split-screen disparity into focus. Jacobs’ company is working on marrying the technologies that will make it possible for consumers to make seamless, in-the-moment purchases inspired by television programming directly from the TV.
The implications are at once exciting for retail brands and frightening for impulse buyers like me. In a tapReplay world, if I like the jacket Howie Mandel is wearing on America’s Got Talent, I can tap a button on my smart remote and tell my smart TV to buy it without interruption. Scarier still, if my wife likes the dress Heidi Klum is wearing, she can do the same.
Today, I almost always have my smartphone by my side when I watch television. I frequently use it to research the interesting things I see on the big screen. When that interest could lead to a purchase, the disparity between the two digital experiences often creates enough “pause” to allow my rational side to kick in and think things through before I enter into a transaction. But if tapReplay’s vision comes to fruition, it will be easy—almost too easy—for consumers to make purchases from their televisions. For retailers, the concept takes brand placement to a whole new level—from advertising to selling—in one fell swoop. That represents an opportunity for merchants to make seamless in-home commerce even easier than Amazon has.
My complete and in-depth interview with Jacobs will be published in our next issue of Innovative Retail Technologies. If you’re at all interested in moving beyond the omni-channel mindset and exploring the next big thing in direct-to-consumer commerce, you’ll want to read it.