#Convo2

A conversation about conversational commerce

Stephanie Rieger wrote this insightful monster of a blog post, and Mack Flavelle pinged her on Twitter and asked her to come discuss it on stage. He could have just asked her to go for coffee or beer or whatever it is people do these days, but the sheer depth of wisdom in the post made it seem like it would be an experience worth sharing. So we did.

The pair sat down with some microphones in front of a small crowd at Mobify, who were generous enough to host the event. The conversation ranged from a discussion of the nature of conversational commerce and the potential for ‘walled gardens’ where brands hold users to their interfaces to a fascinating divergence about the Physical Internet, new technology being pioneered that creates tiny hotspot URLs that users can access with their smartphones.

Introduction

Stephanie Rieger is a product designer, researcher, and closet anthropologist at Yiibu. She thinks a lot about IoT, futures, and re-appropriations of technology. yiibu is a user experience and strategy consultancy that explores the space between technology and people — and what can happen where they intersect. Stephanie has been involved in mobile since before most big companies knew it existed, and brings that wealth of expertise to the subject at hand.

The Article

This dialogue came to be because Mack was fascinated by an incredible blog post that Stephanie wrote about how conversational commerce gives us the opportunity to reimagine the web. The blog post had been brewing for years. One of its meatiest sections is about the evolution of different business models in emerging economies, in countries where most people’s first experience of the internet will be on mobile, and often on social.

In these economies social products have evolved quite differently from in North America, a few very specifically. WeChat in China almost isn’t a social app anymore, and stopped being one quite early. Instead it presents as a pseudo operating system, a tool for everything you do. Chat, is what draws people to use it and return to it, but you can also contact companies and do business. Their sophisticated API means that a brand can come in and create interactive content easily. WeChat is used for everything from booking doctor’s appointments and airline tickets, to elementary schools assignmenting homework; a currency of bite-sized things.

Meanwhile in the west, we have Facebook and Whatsapp that are still mostly chat, but these habits are starting to come together. A huge percentage of Facebook’s audience isn’t in North America anymore, and they’re starting to catch up and release chat products and payments. They want to do what has worked well in other countries, because this is the way that people interact.

The App Store Model

We’ve had a destination mentality in regards to apps. You went somewher, you downloaded the app, you used it and continued to use it; there was a high ‘buy-in’ cost. A lot of the interactions that are happening in social are completely contrary to that: you get a social trigger, maybe you’re sent something by a friend, which means you’re already a little more interested in that thing. You go directly to a website from chat, or perhaps speak directly to a bot without every leaving, and then you’re back to your chat. The amount of time between you clicking on it and you getting it is drastically reduced, with the web back to acting as the layer between these social interactions. The idea that you are constantly trying to re-engage is starting to fade.

The current model tries to drag a user into an app. Imagine walking along Robson Street, peeking into stores. If there were people standing at the door trying to grab you and pull you in, no one would do it. That’s what we’ve been doing for ten years on the web, and that’s what mobile is moving away from.

The Physical Web

Chat is one option for what might replace the app store model. Another possibility is the physical web. This very new innovation uses a small physical beacon to broadcast a single-use URL. For instance, a bank might choose to broadcast their hours of operation of line wait time, while a restaurant might broadcast a daily coupon special. Rather than being pushed to these URLs, users pull information up through a search browser. This allows anyone in physical proximity to a business the chance to take advantage of their apps and offers, with no buy-in time.

In Conclusion

The evening ended with a question-and-answer period followed by an open chat. Attendees were particularly fascinated by the nature of the physical web and possible ramifications of that technology, while some questioned whether the ‘walled garden’ mentality would transfer over to the conversational model. However technology adapts moving forward, it seems clear that the current model will give way to something new. The only question is, what will it be, and will it be better than what we have now?