When i visit any shopping site i notice their product information page is usually inconsistent, lousy, lacking breadth of detail, and i usually need to scope out many other sources, or just give up.

The fix..have a b2b service that provides a universal product details page that can be used by any shopping site as a replacement to their own product details page. In other words, this new service's product details page (the always active content) would be the same across all sites. That way there would not only be a consistent appearance (themes can be changed, of course) across all shopping sites for a product details page but more importantly they (incl. visiting smaller ma-and-pa online stores) now can share collective (and always growing/updating) product related information such as:

- User reviews for that product

- Ask the Manufacturer (live Q&A)

- Hi-Res Pics & 3D Anims (upped by manuf. anytime)

- PDF manuals/in-box brochures

- Direct links to firmware, drivers downloads

- Video Demonstrations

- Product Measurements (Imperial/Metric)

The idea is to save a shopping site money and time, and of course also improve their customer's experience -- increasing sales.
-- corezz, Sep 27 2011

Although I'm sympathetic with the aims of this idea this is already done when purchasers have sufficient power over their suppliers.

Part of the problem is that sellers constantly want to offer new "product deltas" that distinguish their product from others. For examples of this look at the claims made by washing detergent and tooth paste adverts, both of which try to constantly introduce new, often trademarked, terms that "explain" why their product is better than others.

Product Deltas would lead to standard product descriptions to grow to include them and sellers would ask for descriptions that favour them - for example Acme might want a "genuine Acme" tickbox that only their products will ever possess.

Sunny Delight, for example, became infamous in the UK for being a product that changed the skin colour of at least one of their consumers, pretending that it needed to be refrigerated and hiding a remarkably high level of sugar as "carbohydrates".

While consumers have no real power sellers will continue to push for non-standard product descriptions unless they believe that their products will directly benefit from such a standard system.
-- Aristotle, Sep 27 2011


Seems interesting.
-- quantass, Oct 03 2011



random, halfbakery