E-commerce Insights: The Online Retail 2.0 Ideas Tour

User-contributed content is central to Web 2.0 and Online Retail 2.0. You’re probably familiar with Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

Comparison Shoppers

The next stop on the tour, ShopWiki.com, brings the same concept to comparison shopping. ShopWiki lets visitors compare products from contributing retailers. It also contains thousands of user-written essays on topics such as men’s electric shavers, children’s car seats and women’s jeans. While checking out these articles, feel free to fix mistakes or add your opinion — all pages are open to edits from anyone. Before leaving ShopWiki, search for women’s jeans and note the “colors” button. Click the button and a color wheel pops up. Click a color and the search results page instantly re-sorts itself, first presenting the jeans closest to your color preference.