Raving Reviews of My Virtual Model

Did you ever try Google Books? A search for "My Virtual Model" returns some 150 citations. I selected these four recent books which look pretty interesting.

Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World's Most Powerful Consumers, by Bridget Brennan, Crown Business, 2009

"The website Sears.com does the zoom function one better through its "My Virtual Model" feature. The site allows shoppers to input their height, weight, and personal characteristics--even a photo of themselves--to create their own animated online model to try on clothing. It also offers the same feature for home fashions section of the site, enabling shoppers to click and paste everything from furniture to paint colors in images of rooms. It's brilliant and totally unexpected."

Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions, by Bill Scott, Theresa Neil, O'Reilly Media, 2009

"Showing a close-up of a camera on an electronics site is a common technique. But what sets a Live Preview apart from a simple preview is its interactive nature.

Lands' End uses a tool called My Virtual Model to bring Live Previews to clothes shopping. It is based on the premise that if you can show what the clothes will look like on the shoppers, they will be happier with their purchases. While virtual models can only come so close to reality, users can personalize the model with their height, weight, body shape, and so on. Then when they select shirts, pants, and shoes, their virtual model will appear dressed with the items."

Electronic Commerce, by Gary Schneider, Course Technology, 2008

"About 15 percent of visitors to the site use the virtual model and, on average, dress the model 40 times during a visit. Lands' End has found that the dollar amount of orders placed by customers who use the virtual model is about 10 percent larger than other orders. The Canadian company that developed this Web site feature, My Virtual Model, has sold the technology to a number of other clothing retailers."

Chocolates on the pillow aren't enough: reinventing the customer experience, by Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber, Wiley, 2007

"To be effective, technology must be subservient to human ends. The software and web site features used by Lands' End to develop custom clothing designs look simple and may even seem a little hokey. (Does it really matter that My Virtual Model has hair the same length, color, and curliness as mine?) But they help customers take psychological ownership of their clothes even before they order them, providing a sense of figurative comfort that matches the literal comfort we enjoy in well-fitting clothes."

Google Insight for Search: "Shop by Outfit"

Google Insights for Search is a little-known online tool available from Google Labs. Its purpose is to let marketers and researchers peek into Google's query database for trends such as rising keywords by category, product seasonality or geographic distribution. The database provides only a subset of all online queries submitted to Google but this sample is sufficient to capture what's going on while allowing for decent performance.

The following chart shows how the use of the word "Outfit" grew in shopper queries from Jan. 2004 to Feb. 2009, relative to all searches in the Shopping >> Apparel category.

"Outfit" in category Shopping >> Apparel

As one would expect, Apparel Shopping (black) peaks in December each year. Searches for "Outfit" (blue) are remarkedly popular in October, and rising year after year. Although the trend is clear, the October peak may betray the presence of "Halloween outfit" in the sample. A closer look at the last 12 months (2008-2009) should help us here.

"Halloween outfit" in category Shopping > Apparel

"Halloween outfit" (red) has indeed a flattening effects on the whole Apparel category. Let's get more specific by searching for "Shop by outfit" (blue) in 2008-2009 instead.

"Shop by outfit" in category Shopping >> Apparel

This time, the chart shows that "Shop by outfit" (blue) is really rising amongst apparel shoppers. Google Insight for Search cannot tell exactly why people are looking for what they are looking for but as a market research tool, it can undoubtedly help anyone to improve her market insight by trial and error.

MVM 3D Visual Search Goes "Beyond Google"

How do people search for clothing? It depends of who you are, how you want to be, what you have in mind. The same question makes people hate shopping: How do I know what I want?

"My Virtual Model provides a way to search, shop, and buy with your model, which goes beyond Google. Searching evolves from text to 3D. The customer dresses up her model with the styles she is looking for, just as if she were with her own personal shopper. Any search engine gives the results by matching real sellable items with the customer's query. This enables a discovery of products by personal style."

The New Language of Marketing 2.0 by Sandy Carter, IBM Press, 2008.

Thanks Sandy. "Beyond Google", you say? I really like to quote you on this.

Personalization is not just another fad. It’s the way you choose to surf the Web. We all do it. Today’s young adults had a very different schooling than baby-boomers. During the 80’s and 90’s, new interactive methods focusing on process rather than content were introduced in primary schools. People learned how to find answers fitting their questions. These skills prepared them for the Internet Age where new content is available each day that wasn’t there the day before.

One of these interactive learning methods is called Storyline:

"Together, learner and teacher create a scenario through visualisation; the making of collages, three-dimensional models and pictures employing a variety of art and craft techniques. (...) The teacher’s role is mainly that of a facilitator."

The Storyline Method (from Wikipedia)

Lots of us know that learning has to be fun to be effective, and merchandisers know that about shopping since the Ice Age.

My Virtual Model 3D Visual Search works by helping people to find things the way they’re used to find them, visually. And they love it!

By the end of Q4-2008, MVM installed two Visual Search public pilots on Sears.com and MSN Shopping to demonstrate ROI in both retail and portal contexts. As metrics belong to our partners, we cannot say more about this for now but I will update you about our own pilot in my next post.