SmartSymbols^tm

Great article on CNBC.com today about consumer behavior prior to product purchasing (great article name too): “Study Reveals What’s Really Going on in Aisle Six“. The article talks about different aspects of what makes consumer make the final buying decision, but it also has this very interesting quote: “[m]ore than three-quarters of the shoppers took time to do research before heading to the store, typically an hour or more”. In other words, it confirms, once again, the fact that people do a lot of research before buying a product, whether that is happening online or at a brick-and-mortar store.

The question is, why is that after doing all the research in front of the computer, consumers often time end up driving to the store and buying the product there? I would venture to say that they need to look at a product in person, look at other products and compare, use the coupons, i.e. - interact with it and get the complete story.


This is exactly what we have been saying all along (see references below) - give people ability to interact with your product online, and they are a lot more likely to buy your product. Since the shipping is getting cheaper and faster (Amazon, L.L. Bean, even Nordstrom now), the only barrier to buying online is the lack of research and discount coupons. But put this online, next to the product - and you got another converted customer.

Blog post references, with illustrations:
“Secret of the Conversion Funnel”
“New Advertising = Research + Transparency”
“I Came, I Glanced, I Observed - Just Like Sherlock Holmes!”

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“Any problem can be made clearer with a picture” - Dan Roam

Solar Backpack Demo has a Social Networking icon, you can see it below, it’s the last icon in the backpack SmartSymbol stack.

(Just hover your mouse over it to see it work).

Why do we need it?
It turns out that one of the biggest worries companies have when it comes to using social networking in their marketing strategy, is a concern that they have no control about what kind of comments will appear in association with their products. Which really means that we don’t want bad comments.

It is a valid concern, to be sure, but that is exactly why it is important to control and direct the flow of the social networking information, and employ a strategy that works with social networking, instead of hiding from it. People will find the tweets and blog posts about our products, whether we like it or not. Why not bring them all together on our terms?

The picture below describes what is behind the social networking icon in SmartSymbols (click on picture to expand).

So what?
As you can see from the diagram, with Social Networking icon we can aggregate all our product-related “buzz” of our choice, and present it to our customers and audiences, while minimizing the possibility that our customer may leave the site (something that we must avoid at all costs).

The reality of implementation of any of today’s social networking strategies, is that it takes planning, time and effort. And the better tools we use to automate the process of delivery of the fruits of our work - the better.

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We are changing our brand to give it more focus and a broader market appeal. This will require that we eventually change our company name as well, to something more like SmartSymbols Technology.

Essentially, the purpose of our technology is to convert our client’s website shoppers to customers, we do it through increased customer interaction. And SmartSymbols technology virtually guarantees the increase in interaction. So, consequently, we decided that we should align and focus everything on one subject - SmartSymbols Technologies.

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