What do consumers like about designing their own products?

Posted on January 11, 2012 by treehouselogic

What did you like about the product configurator?

We recently ran a research study that investigated consumer tastes and preferences in the context of product customization.  The goal was to find out what consumers want from a product customizer.  We asked them to run through a Treehouse Logic product configurator and then respond to a series of questions.

The results are very telling:  User experience design is top priority.  Consumers are no longer of tolerant of websites that are not intuitive and fun to use.   Good usability includes application performance, a smart layout, and comprehensive navigation.   When users are exposed to an A+ site, they appreciate it.  During the user flow, consumers need obvious answers to questions like ‘where am I?,’ ‘what do I do next?’ and “how do I finish?”

In addition to ease of use, respondents mentioned the ability to navigate many choices, and the importance of visualization of the custom product.

  • 50% complimented the site’s ease of use
  • 33% appreciated the rich selection of choices, (ie a graceful solution to “the paradox of choice.”)
  • 17% raved about the visualization, ie zoom, alternate views, and the importance of seeing high quality, accurate images of the product as they design it.

179 respondents answered the optional open-ended question “What did you like most about the product customizer?”  Here are a few verbatim answers.

Ease of use:

“Intuitive, lots of preprogrammed options, fast, very EASY”

“Easy and simple steps with a quick update of pricing on additional additions.”

“Its intuitive design and customizing features”

Selection:

“A wide range of selections.  Various colors.”

“I liked being able to choose colors for every component.”

“Broad options for materials and colors.”

Visualization:

“Very fast in seeing what I wanted to appear in my changes”

“The zoom feature  – the varying viewpoints of the product”

“I liked the visualization of the custom bag.”

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[video] Bodymetrics addresses the fit problem

Posted on January 9, 2012 by treehouselogic

Bodymetrics addresses the fit problem of mass customization.   “Ordered jeans online and they don’t fit!”  Introducing Bodymetrics for Your Living Room.

 

 

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[video] Personalization is about people: customink

Posted on January 5, 2012 by treehouselogic

Great video from www.customink.com describing the value of personalized products.

Personalization adds a level of value beyond the surface it is printed on.  Personalization delivers emotion, fun, captured memories, and brand relationships.  T-shirts unite!

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How big is the Mass Customization industry?

Posted on January 5, 2012 by treehouselogic

Mass customization market size

How many millions of dollars in sales does the mass customization industry generate every year?    Can I get that data by region?  Can we slice the data by customer segment; like urban hipster youth versus affluent soccer moms?   Who are the incumbent companies in the mass customization market?   Who are the up and comer start-ups and what market share are they gaining?

Well, the first problem to answering these questions is that the mass customization industry does not exist as a stand-alone industry.   Even Frank Piller would agree that the ‘mass customization’ term is an oxymoron and doesn’t accurately describe one specific market.   The term is really a generic description of manufacturing process.

Here’s a break down of some sub-markets that leverage customization:

Personalization

The personalization industry is really it’s own animal.   Usually personalization incudes these two key elements:

1)    Image upload (upload a picture of your cat and drag it over this t-shirt!)

2)    Text overlay (write a message over the image of your adorable cat!)

Personalization manifests itself as a sub-section of the printing industry.   Shutterly enables personalized photos, Vista Print offers custom business cards and stationary, and Zazzle and CafePress offer custom printed hard goods like skateboards, caps, and sweatshirts.

The personalization industry is giant and growing, no doubt.  Zazzle alone has 1,000 employees.    Companies like CaféPress, Threadless, and Spreadshirt are growing and in some cases eyeing IPOs.

User-generated products

The design-it-yourself market is gaining steam as shown by a flurry of VC funding and NikeID generating $100M in 2010 from custom products alone.   Most of the customization vendors featured in recent “The customization 500” study are small, with a few exceptions like Nike, Converse, and Adidas.

One thing is for sure, we are in a mass customization 2.0, ie “me-commerce” era beyond just offering basic customizability.  “Where Mass Customization 1.0 offered a single experience for a built-to-order process, Me-Commerce digs deeper to tailor the customization experience to the goals, desires, and motives of the consumer, leveraging these idiosyncrasies to assist the customer in developing the best possible product and with the best possible experience.”

What’s important to realize is that customization will permeate ALL reaches of the larger retail market.   Large volume commodity apparel manufacturers like Gap and Old Navy will integrate more interactive visualization tools into their online shopping experience.    Mass producers will over a level of customization, ie designability, into the purchasing flow.

“Standard” products like cameras and mobile phones will expand their choice navigation tools to product configurator toolsets.   The key ingredient is fun.  Shopping is getting more fun and inherently more shareable.   And shareable content is the key to any successful social media campaign.

Consumers are suffering from “search fatigue.”   Engaging customization experiences add value to mainstream shopping sites because they

  • Offer a new level of creative interaction.   Consumers want to have more fun while shopping.
  • Offer a more intuitive way to navigate the ‘paradox of choice.”    New businesses like Fab.com and Trunk Club have shown that users will spend money on services that offer the service of product curation.
  • Generates a more social shopping experience.   Customization is really just a sub-set of the social commerce market, ie design/shop and share products ala Facebook, Pinterest or Polyvore.   Engagement is just as important, if not more important, than sales conversion.

So, how large is the mass customization market?  Well, how large is the retail market?  The online shopping market?  The manufacturing industry?  I guess it depends how you slice it, but there’s a lot of missing data out there.

(Side note:  It’s too early to tell where 3D printing will take hold in the consumer and manufacturing markets, but one vendor, Markerbot, claims to have sold 10,000 3D printers in 2011.)

This post was inspired by Carmen’s article on the topic of revenue opportunity in mass customization.

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Ecommerce innovation focuses on people

Posted on January 3, 2012 by treehouselogic

Etsy sales

2011 was a big year for a new wave of sexy ecommerce business models.   Consumers have shown an interest in (and been throwing disposable income at) new online buying experiences that offer more than just large catalog of products.  Here’s a quick summary of some new spins on the online shopping business model:

Specialized portals

Etsy specializes in hand-made goods by enabling very-very small businesses to sell their goods online.    Etsy “brings heart” to ecommerce and has created a strong community around hand crafted goods and sustainable manufacturing.  Some juicy Etsy stats:

  • For 2011, sales increased over 80% from 2010 (compared to a 10-30% industry average)
  • Etsy had more than 15 million visits Etsy between Black Friday and Cyber Monday
  • Etsy’s mobile traffic grew 350% from 2010 to 2011.

Why has Etsy seen such success?  Instead of a we-sell-anything approach, Etsy focuses on the collectibles community.   Many sellers have grown tired of eBay’s old school interface and lack of focus on sellers.  Additionally, Etsy has created a sense of product quality and prioritizes technical innovation and the user experience.

Happy Toy Machine

Design it yourself

In 2011, more newcomers popped up in the design-it-yourself (ie mass customization) space.   These sites enable the quasi-designer or fashion blogosphere  to control product design.  Happy Toy Machine, Define my Style, Ocozy, and Style Rocks all launched in 2011, just to name a few.   Design-it-yourself is a great fit for product categories that include both functional and style variability.  Popular categories include fashion, jewelry, food, toys, and furniture.

What is the size of the design-it-yourself market?  Many indicators show growth trends, including a recent Forrester report that finds that “interest in customizable products is mounting. More than 35% of U.S. online consumers are already interested in customizing product features or in purchasing build-to-order products that use their specifications.”

Social commerce

2011 was the year that social commerce went mainstream, mostly as a result of online retailers integrating Facebook share and like functionality into their pages.

Copious, a new San Francisco based start-up, focuses on solving an age-old problem in ecommerce:  trust.   Shoppers want to feel confident that they are getting what they expect, and from reputable (or known) sellers.  Copious taps into your Facebook network to make you feel more at ease by showing your “six degrees of separation” from the buyer.

Curated designs / fashion

Fab.com is focused on good design

Fab.com takes the daily deal concept to the next level by focusing not just on great deals, but on great design.    Fab’s recent business model pivot and growth success can be attributed to the need to focus on a well-defined, but broad shopping category; great design.  Indeed, curation of content is a refreshing approach to many customers that are fatigued from the noise of product search and daily deal emails.

Another ecommerce model that leverages the power of curation is subscription commerce.  Subscription commerce provides a shopping solution for customers that don’t want to go to the mall (ie suffer from mall fatigue).   Examples include Trunk Club and Manpacks.

What do all these new ecommerce models have in common?  Focus on people.  These companies are not technology companies or supply chain companies; they are service companies.   They are servicing a market that large shopping marketplaces have neglected.

  • Focus on community:  Specialized shopping portals like Etsy focus on cultivating the needs of a specific customer segment
  • Encourage creativity:  Design-it-yourself sites focus on inviting the customer to participate as a designer
  • Build trust:  Social commerce sites like Copious focus on raising consumer confidence by validating the trustworthiness of sellers
  • Editorialize content:  Curated daily deal sites focus on providing style advice along with great deals.

What’s are some next generation trends in ecommerce?  Aspirational shopping for one.  Pinterest has created a rapidly growing community focused on the cross-section of self-expression and online shopping.

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Customization video round up

Posted on December 8, 2011 by treehouselogic

Here are a few videos from various corners of the customization and fashion technology markets.

3D customization in Spain

This fashion design tool requires a “unity web player plug-in.”   Huh?  Otherwise, a great demonstration of life-like online shopping (ie augmented reality) via a ‘virtual try it on’ approach.

Mass customization of housing

Really slick video graphics to demonstrate modeling user-specific products based on defined parameters (ie a product configurator).  Very space age and academic.

Upcload takes on “the fit problem.”

Here’s a pretty slick demo on how shoppers can easily match their body dimensions to garment sizes online.  The goal is to achieve the Holy Grail of online apparel retailing; ensuring the perfect fit over the Internet.  Of course it will only solve the problem if the platform is widely adopted by brands.  In the context of mass customization, you can imagine how a shopper would design-their-own product by specify functions, styles and colors, then submit their body dimensions with a quick “Upload ID” submission.

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Customization vs. product quality

Posted on December 7, 2011 by treehouselogic

In our recent research on consumer preferences in the context of product customization, we asked respondents to consider the product customization process.  We asked them “How important would the following factors be to you?”

(Red = very important. Blue = extremely important)

Quality

Quality is king.  Authenticity is a form of quality. Users are inspecting zoom images, researching where products are made, reading reviews, scrutinizing product specs and asking friends for their opinions.  Users want value above all else.

The importance of quality is worth mentioning because many companies that offer custom products tend to highlight customizability above all else.  Custom candy, for example, may NOT be inherently more valuable than standard candy.    It would be a mistake to assume that the ability to customize supersedes product quality.

Yes, customization adds value, and perhaps even merits a price premium, but customization in itself is not a fully baked value proposition.  The key learning here is that inviting users to “have it their way” means nothing unless the core product is desirable.   A custom fitted shirt, for example, lacks in quality if it shows up on your doorstep poorly constructed and made from cheap fabric.

Size / Fit

Far and away the biggest barrier to adoption of the online retailing market is “the fit problem.”   How can users match their body dimensions to custom products?   There is no clear answer, as this is still an unsolved problem.    Certainly, integrating a product configurator into the shopping flow is a good start, but the challenge is in making the fit process frictionless and 100% accurate.   There are millions to be saved in product returns.

Ease of use: check out process

Shoppers don’t tolerate awkward shopping cart check-out experiences anymore.   Brush up on techniques for converting shopping cart abandons.  Again, customization does not supersede the importance of the basics.  The basics include a smooth, fast checkout.

Here’s a great example of the impact of poor ecommerce design, Expedia removed one field from their registration process and increased sales by $12M.   Shoppers get frustrated easily, it’s important to streamline wherever you can to minimize the risk of abandons.

More on build-your-own experience, selection, and brand loyalty in a future post…

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How important is guidance?

Posted on November 30, 2011 by treehouselogic

In our recent study on consumer preferences, respondents made it clear that guidance is critical in guiding them to make good decisions.

Simplicity vs complexity

Interestingly, age does differentiate users in terms of their tolerance for complexity.  But, “The customization paradox” applies to users of all ages.   Users are fickle.  They want complete control, but when you give them too much power, they get frustrated.   The key to mitigating “customization fatigue” is guidance.  Use templates with defaults, filter options, reduce steps, and show recommended combinations.    Make your design tool “customer proof.”   The trick is to give them power and to protect them from themselves at the same time.

Why do young users want more complexity? 

Most likely because younger generations are accustomed to digital control, and are therefore more inclined to control hard products as well.

Per Frank Piller, consumers are finally ready for customization:  “I believe it took 10 years of consumer education on the net so that MANY of them feel confident to not just shop standard products from a catalog, but also co-create. Also, today’s 25-35’s – a core group of people buying custom goods – are trained by the interactive solutions of social networking, but also co-creation in computer games. This generation is the natural shopper for custom goods – and getting old enough now to have the discretionary income to buy custom goods online.

Millenials

Design constraints

The reality is that customers are customizing YOUR brand.  They are empowered to customize within the constraints that you define.  Customers are great editors, but are they talented designers / creators?   Most customers don’t want a blank canvas, they want to start with recommended (virtual) products and make adjustments to match their tastes.  This is guidance at its core.   It really depends who your customization customers are, but guidance is appreciated by advanced and novice product designers.   Creativity loves constraint.

Co-creation

Users want to see suggested designs, what other customers are designing, the last 5 products built, product of the week, etc.   Inspire them with creative suggestions rather than asking them to be creative in a vacuum.

From our research, here are a few verbatim suggestions on how product configurators can improve:

  • “More suggestions or creations by others.”
  • “Better to provide a big pool of ‘good designs’ as showcase and customers could use those or work from there.”
  • “I think it can be improved by providing pre-customized products with option to modify the product.”

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Research notes: The pillars of customization

Posted on November 23, 2011 by treehouselogic

Here are a few key points from our recent study on consumer preferences:

Visualization is critical

Many customizers don’t show a ‘WYSIWYG” representation of the final product, which is a mistake.   Visualization boosts consumer confidence and increases sales conversions.   Users expect accurate visualizations of their creations.  That said, they don’t necessarily expect tricky visual animations, just accurate ones.   Visualization help builds trust.

Pillars of customization

The fit problem

“The fit problem” is the primary barrier to adoption to buying custom apparel.     This is not just a customization problem; it’s an online retailing problem.   Asking customers to self-measure is very risky.  “…online retailing is being hit by crippling returns, up to 30% of goods are sent back: very often simply because they don’t fit.” – WSJ

User experience

Don’t expect your customers to be tolerant of awkward software design just because you offer customization.  What is good user experience?  Is it just a polished website design?  The answer isn’t that clear.  Designing a great customization experience is something we all agree is critical, but there is no universal answer to how UX design is done well.

Price premium

The majority of customers are price sensitive.  Walmart.com, Amazon and eBay are all about price savings, for example.   Groupon is the fastest growing company in history, and their core value is offering 50% off valuable products and services.   Per a recent Deloitte study: “discounted prices become an anticipated part of the consumer products shopping experience.”

Customization is not just for luxury products, it will be part of almost every shopping experience in the form of select, adjust design, add accessories, personalize, etc.   Brands that compete on price can also differentiate by offering customization.

BUT, luxury brands continue to thrive and can command premium prices for customization.   Burburry just launched a customizer that sells $7,000 fur trench coats.   BMW reports that customers that use their configurator spend 20% more than those that go to the car dealer.

The key here is to realize that for many brands, visual customization is expected. It is a requirement.  Price is still king.   But certainly, customization continues to be a differentiator that helps command a premium price.   At MCPC 2011, someone commented that personalization is the process of changing an object into something with a high emotional value attached.

(More on guidance in an upcoming post…)

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Whitepaper 2011: What do consumers want from a product customizer?

Posted on November 22, 2011 by treehouselogic

What do shoppers want from an online customization experience?

Which product configurator features are most important?

  • Visualization
  • Intuitive design
  • Guidance / recommendations

Will shoppers still pay a premium price for customization?

Research objective:  To help the collective mass customization industry to build better customization experiences.

This is the second study we’ve launched on the topic of consumer preferences in the context of product customization.  See last year’s study.   This presentation was presented at the Mass Customization and Personalization, and co-creation 2011 conference, November, 2011.

Filed under: Consumer Experience | Tagged: , , , , | 3 Comments »

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