Around the Net
RSS for Ecommerce?
- NY Times, Monday, March 6, 2006 10:30 AM
Online retailers are turning to RSS, or really simple syndication, to feed product alerts to Internet users who want to know instantly when designers bring new products to market. Companies like eBags, ice.com, Tower Records and others are using RSS to feed product alerts to Internet users on their personalized Google, Yahoo or other pages. As The New York Times points out, RSS gives merchants a way to hedge against the recent decision by AOL and Yahoo to start charging for bulk commercial e-mails. Says Jon Newmark, chief executive of eBags: "Rather than delivering a slightly relevant message to a person's mailbox, this allows us to get customers very detailed information directly." At eBags, the new service will work like this: consumers who visit either the company's site will see RSS icons next to certain products. The user inputs their preference for, say, size 11 black shoes, then clicks on the icon and the company sends relevant alerts to his or her personalized Web page when a new product or promotion regarding the specific item comes up. Will RSS feeds be effective for retailers? Analysts seem to think they will be in the future, as RSS-enabled personalized Web pages become more prevalent on the Web. In any case, it's a worthy experiment, as RSS feeds cost nothing to deliver.
