I just attended a Meetup in Portland tonight called Frictionless Purchasing where Stephen Grieco, Senior Account Manager of Struck (Digital Branding and Advertising agency) presented about the concept of frictionless purchasing online, and what it means to everyone working in the web world today. With iPhone's built-in app-store, to Amazon's One-Click purchasing, it's important to remove any barrier between a customer's decision to make a purchase, and actually making it.
Thank you Vitamin T for providing free pizza and drinks for the evening.
Stephen shared real-world examples of frictionless purchasing:
- Starbuck's (coffee loyalty program, easy purchase process)
- Amazon.com 1-click (quickest way to checkout on the web)
- Google Payments
- Chirpify (Using Twitter and PayPal to make payments)
- PayPal
- Twitter (Nike tweeting hashtags to let you schedule when to buy a new shoe)
- Square (credit card swiping with lower fees using any cell phone)
- Apple Store (Use an app to buy anything in the store and charge it to your card without a sales clerk)
Our group also was interactive and stared a lively discussion on the security concerns of the different approaches, PCI compliance, and how to basically replace our wallet with a smart phone instead.
