Etsy.com Socializes the Online Holiday Shopping Experience

Whether we’re ready for it or not, it’s officially holiday season. It seems to come earlier and earlier each year, with an ever-more-intense onslaught of promotional messaging from retailers.

Similar to holidays past, I’ve noticed that the majority of brands are focusing efforts largely around promotions, offers and deals.

• In-store signage prompting shoppers to text a key word to a short code in order to receive special deals directly on their mobile devices.
• Coupons loaded to mobile devices via QR codes.
• The plethora of special deals pushed out to consumers via blast emails.

Consumers are bombarded with offers to the point where they have learned to shop on deals this time of year. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing (unless you’re giving away the farm), seeing as how deals are the top reason that consumers engage with a brand online.

But the problem is this: not many retailers are differentiating themselves by delivering upon other consumer expectations.

 

EXCEPTION: Etsy.com.

This holiday season, Etsy has set out to alleviate the age-old problem of finding the perfect gift for those on your shopping list.

 

Etsy is run by thousands of independent shop owners and as such, cannot centrally compete on deals. Instead, the marketing minds at Etsy have decided to differentiate by competing on the basis of “surprising and delighting” consumers and making the usually stressful task of holiday shopping easier.

Now, to be sure, other retailers have experimented in this space. For example, Gifts.com has a handy Personality Profiler that allows you to answer a few quick questions about someone and get a lengthy list of appropriate gifts sourced from a variety of brands.

But Etsy’s initiative is different. It’s easy. It’s seamless. It’s entrenched in your social network. Here’s why it works:

1) It solves a common problem.

Who doesn’t struggle with what gift to get for someone? This is an everyday problem that Etsy was able to creatively solve.

2) It’s simple and intuitive to use.

Click “Get Gift Recommendations.”  Click “Log In.”  BOOM! Magic.

3) It protects your privacy.

I love that this entire process is laden with straightforward disclaimers to make the user feel at-ease.

“We’ll never post to Facebook without your permission.” (Why thank you)

“Logging in will not add this app’s activity to Facebook.” (Brilliant!)

“Your friends won’t know you’re shopping for them.” 

4) It’s relevant.

I was a bit skeptical about what results this would generate, as I know some of the Facebook interest categories can be broad/weird/generally “off.” But, the gifts that were suggested for my friends are ACTUALLY gifts I would buy and that they would enjoy. It was surprisingly spot-on.

5) It’s share-able.

I can tell all my friends about this via Facebook and Twitter and be the hero of their holiday shopping for introducing them to such a convenient service!

6) It’s sustainable.

As a business initiative for Etsy, this was well worth any financial and resource investment because this functionality is evergreen. It can live on and serve its noble purpose well beyond the holidays. Furthermore, Etsy shop owners will love this because it helps drive traffic to their store (although shop owners may want to consider re-tagging their shops to better align with Facebook interest categories… just sayin’).

 

I wonder if other online retailers will follow suit with similar functionality as we lead into the holiday season. Thoughts?