“I was sitting on my couch the other evening, my wife seated across from me, when I decided it was as good a time as any to start Christmas shopping for her,” Jason Del Rey writes for AllThingsD. “She had given me some ideas to use as a sort of inspiration set, but I instead thought I would just buy a few of the exact items on the list to get some gifts under my belt before the calendar turned to December.
“A visit to H&M’s website: Click, click, click. Done. Then, a visit to Amazon.com: Click, click, click. Done,” Del Rey writes. “Hardly a thought involved. No stress. Christmas in a neat brown box for the most important woman in my life, delivered to my doorstep in just two days.”
“By and large, [e-commerce sites] are too easy, too impersonal, and — really — too convenient. That impersonality is perhaps part of the reason why so many young, digital commerce companies seem intent on opening pop-up shops or permanent outposts in the brick-and-mortar world,” Del Rey writes. “But there are some encouraging signs in a young crop of e-commerce startups going out of their way to convey the story behind the products to their site visitors in an effort to establish a connection.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]