Personalized Online Shopping Assistance Review
Digital advancements have definitely resulted in making life more convenient for people around the world. After the advent of Internet, marketing and sales processes have gone online aiding customers to analyse the use/pricing of the product before purchasing it.
Businesses that realized the user trend of collecting online information have set up online forums and discussion boards where all possible shopping questions on their products are answered.
Current Scenario
While online forums and discussion boards do have their own dedicated set of users, majority of online users do not use them because of the fact that they provide only the manufacturer point of view. Users prefer to get real time data on currently selling products along with another user reviewing its operation/installation.
Also, what these sites have failed to address is that more number of users prefer to get online shopping answers for different kinds of products from the same place. Users prefer to use sites that provide shopping advice on different items, like baby diapers, tickets to movie, 32” LCD TV or Garmin GPS. Every user will have their own shopping list and would love to research sales information on all of them from the same site.
Useful Solution
An ideal solution for overcoming these challenges is to address them keeping in mind the primary use of online shopping – time saving. Bringing together user views and suggestion on different products based on the questions posed in the site can be of great help to online shoppers. Once they get to know where to buy a product and the approximate selling value from another user who has undergone the same ordeal, it brings more authenticity to that information.
While online marketing sites are putting in so much of effort to popularize their products, it would add more value if they are linked to a personalized shopping site where all kinds of product information is discussed by online users.

