No-Flash & Fashion for Google

[Bartel Scheers]

At the WWD CEO Summit early this month in New York, Google VP Marissa Mayer took the stage to give senior fashion and retail professionals some advice about their web presence. After explaining how Google Trends can help spot the waning popularity of a topic like plaid, she made her feelings clear on the use of Adobe’s Flash in fashion. With a red line through its logo on the screen behind her, she told the audience to stop using Flash to build their site. “Its OK to use it in a window but don’t build your whole site in it. Googles algorithms don’t like it,” she explained.



The Google executive also urged the need for speedy loading and she revealed some insights from recent user research. She said that while its difficult for the human eye to quickly scan hundreds of textual search results, a recent study she conducted showed that people can scan down through a thousand images on a page very effectively. Mayer urged that Fashion sites make hundreds of thumbnails of clothes cascade rather than get users to click through a small batch page by page.

Now this is all nice & true and pretty much the same advice we at Seqwood give our fashion clients, but what makes it very interesting is that this friendly urge came only a few weeks before the launch of Google's own Fashion project Boutiques.com.



The new Google Boutiques website encourages users to articulate their own fashion likes and dislikes – halter top vs. one-shoulders? – while also asking celebrities and designers, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Nicole Richie and Oscar de la Renta, among them, to curate their own favorite picks. (The dawn of the "I like"-economy rings a bell?!)

According to Munjal Shah, Google director of product development,“So far, the online shopping experience has been tailored for hard goods – books, CDs, DVDs, electronics,” said Munjal Shah, Google director of product management. "Yet", he adds, “soft goods, which include apparel and complementary accessories, is where the bigger piece of retail action lies."



Using music as a comparison model, Shah noted that consumers categorize themselves by genre, for example country or rock. But the fashion customer wants more.

That’s where searches on the new Boutiques.com site are further defined by silhouette, color, size and even pattern. Boutiques.com offers thumbs-up or thumbs-down quizzes of trends and then asks users to describe not just what they like or dislike, but also why.

“Soft goods are more emotional. It’s not about reviews of the products as much as it is about the mannequin appeal and styling,” Shah says.



But Google isn’t getting into the sales game – yet. While the site employs recognition software -- I guess that's where Marissa's advise for cascades of small thumbs and no-flash fits in-- to research options for consumers, retailers, including small, local boutiques as well as big department stores, serve as the sellers. Users will be sent to retail sites to complete their purchases. Google will make its money from directing people to those e-commerce sites. Inventory will be updated each evening, so shoppers are offered the most current merchandise.

If you're in the online fashion business this is your wake-up call! Bubble up, you have less than a year before this, this, this, this, this, and let's not forget this is going to bite you if you don't start talking to your agency right now.