ONLINE
COMMERCE
You may remember the improbable scene
from futuristic movies of the fifties and sixties: A large screen in somebody's
ultra high-tech apartment lites up and a soft voice croons: 'welcome, what
can I do for you?'. And then the film character orders a bottle of champagne,
on ice, glasses, caviar etcetera - 'and oh yes, I'll be needing a car for
tomorrow, what are your options?' Today this scenario is very close from
being realized in the average home. You still can't talk to most computers,
but you can do the rest. Online shopping is the Next Big Thing, if we are
to believe the marketeers, and the only thing that prevents it from instant
total success is the problem of identification and payment online. Countless
wizzkids are working on watertight privacy proof digital cash systems,
so that little bug will most likely be solved in the near future. And then
we can all go shopping on the Net with a pocketful of cyberbucks. Right
now you can purchase flowers, pc's, stock photo's, clothes, domestic decorations
and what have you via the WWW. You can browse the digital shops like you
wander the floors of a department store, picking up things here and there
and emptying your basket at the counter. At that point the illusion of
walking a shop floor usually stops: There's nothing to take away, and you
have to fill in lengthy forms with your name, address, telephone and fax
numbers, credit card data, email account... And then you'll have to wait
for the shopkeeper to call you back for confirmation. And after that you
pay by credit card of money order and wait for delivery...
Little problems, that come to your
attention only at the end of your shopping experience. Before that, the
sites do their utmost to look like real shops. There's entertainment in
the big warehouses, updates on trends and little games to please the children.
Every screen tries to be a shop window, displaying the glamorous product,
and the interfaces sometimes literally imitate the navigation of the physical
sites. Then you see the elevator lights at the top of your screen, indicating
which floor you're on. Or the neon signs that tell you in which direction
to go for the domestic department. Other sites look more like the advertisement
pages of free local papers, embellished with lots of moving dots and flashy
letters and rotating pictograms that approach you saying: 'order now, for
the holidays!' Like in the real world there's 'high' and 'low' shopping
on the web. |