At Some Sites, Seeing Is Believing

"Seeing is believing," goes the old adage. Now a growing number of e-commerce Web sites are broadening their visual field with live cameras that let shoppers view goods in real-time.

Even before high-speed Internet access becomes pervasive, a number of e-commerce sites, from cattle auctions to retail stores, have begun to explore the utility of live video feeds.

Live video promises to let traditional brick-and-mortar retailers enhance online shopping. "We've got 48 cameras now, with more on the way," said Walt Dunnigan, IT Director at Gallery Furniture Inc., who believes he is the first (and, for now, only) furniture retailer to use the technology.

The company's Web site, galleryfurniture.com, which started with eight cameras, has now shipped more than 2 million pictures over the past three months.

But the Webcams, which cover the store's showroom, do considerably more than add cinematic spice. They are an integral part of the site's e-commerce set-up, serving the role that an electronic, inventory catalog would handle elsewhere.

"Our inventory churns 70 times a year vs. four or five times a year for most furniture stores," said Dunnigan. As a result, keeping a catalog system up-to-date is deemed more trouble than it is worth. With the camera approach, "If you can see it [on our showroom] you can buy it," said Dunnigan.

Visitors to the site can zoom in on cards attached to each piece of furniture that contain the item's price and an identification number.

Moreover, Dunnigan argues that live video is an excellent way to complete a transaction, such as when one spouse is in the store and the other is watching the action from a remote location. "We sold a lot of furniture to a woman in the store whose husband was sitting and watching at a PC in Saudi Arabia," Dunnigan said. A number of customers, he said, enter the store with printouts of the items they have viewed via the Webcams.

Still, galleryfurniture.com is more the exception than the rule. Although no one measures usage, Webcams are not believed to be widely deployed for e-commerce sites today. But many sites, such as Illinois Harley-Davidson Sales, Inc., a motorcycle dealership outside of Chicago, are testing the technology.

The appeal of video is a way to "hook visitors with interactivity rather than a static catalog," said Chris Hajer, service department manager at Illinois Harley-Davidson.

While video cams promise to improve the shopping experience, they are of limited utility when used by shoppers connected to low-bandwidth dial-up lines, said Rob Enderle, a vice president at Giga Information Group.

Nevertheless, the technology is being refined rapidly, thanks to the work of vendors and one of their most-ardent early adopters. "The ones exploring this technology most are porno sites, and once they get it solved we'll see compelling applications across the auction and retail sites," Enderle said.

While there are numerous low-end consumer Web conferencing products from companies such as Logitech, Philips, Panasonic, Creative Labs and Sony, other vendors including Perceptual Robotics, Rearden Technology and Access Communications, provide industrial grade remote control systems for e-commerce sites.

"I think this will be a part of electronic retailing from here on," said Perceptual Robotics' CEO Paul Cooper. For one thing, Cooper said, video gives a brick-and-mortar retailer a chance to use its expertise in store design and differentiate the established retailers from online-only sites.

One of PRI's latest customers, FAO Schwarz, recently added a Webcam in its Manhattan store. Without a store camera, Cooper said, there is not much difference between the venerable toy store and an Internet-only toy retailer. "That's doing a gross disservice to FAO Schwarz," he said.

Meanwhile, Cooper said, video improves the shopper's online experience, which he criticized as "emotionless and not much fun." The low-bandwidth issue is a valid one, he admits, but he said that PRI's cameras do not rely on live video, and instead give a series of still images or images from different angles.

PRI has three methods for what it called "Look and Buy," or linking a video camera to an e-commerce system.

The simplest approach, a la galleryfurniture.com, is to put price tags on the individual items for sale. While this approach works, it does have its drawbacks, such as the chance that the shopper will be unable to see the price card.

A more sophisticated tact is a "postcard" function, through which a shopper sends a customer service representative a message via e-mail or chat asking about a particular item.

Finally, because PRI's software understands where a shopper is looking--say, a shelf of sweaters or a category of toys--it can trigger a prompt.

Privately held Perceptual, founded three-and-a-half years ago, said it has sold hundreds of cameras and its related software. The combination of hardware and software costs $5,000 to $10,000 per site, depending on configuration.