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People that have given you money once are much more likely to give you more of it. With RSS enabled eCommerce you can get more product in front of more customers more often with less friction then you can with traditional methods (email).

I have recently come up with an RSS eCommerce design pattern that addresses the need to get new product in front of customers without an email requirement. I am calling this pattern “The Mode.” The new weapon in your eCommerce marketing arsenal.

(Wikipedia Usage) RSS is a simple XML-based system that allows users to subscribe to their favorite websites. Using RSS, webmasters can put their content into a standardized format, which can be viewed and organized through RSS-aware software or automatically conveyed as new content on another website.

“The Mode”

Last week I was given the opportunity to implement “The Mode” for my client at Greenloop, it works like this: When Greenloop adds a new product to their eCommerce package it automatically adds the product (title, description, image and price) to their RSS Feed. The Next time a Greenloop RSS Feed subscriber visits his/her aggregator (feed reader) of choice – mine is reader.google.com – the new product will be available for viewing.

Greenloop feed in the reader.google.com interface

The Product has effectively been pushed to the customer making them the proverbial first on the block to get a shot at your latest inventory without even visiting your site.

This is all standard RSS Feed functionality I wish I could claim I invented but I didn’t. What makes “The Mode” unique is in how I repurpose the Feed to reach visitors to the site that have not already subscribed.

Product Cloud

“The Mode” injects the Feed content into a product cloud (a variation on the tag cloud design pattern). The product cloud turns the RSS Feed into a textual representation of Greenloop’s latest product offering weighted by product popularity or date depending on preference.

Image of the Greenloop product cloud

The product cloud can then be placed anywhere on your site. Greenloop uses theirs on the home but you could use it as navigation in your footer template or sidebar content in your Blog. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Keeps on giving

Since “The Mode” pattern creates a keyword rich textual representation of your newest product offering it is also great for search engine optimization (SEO).

“The Mode” has only been running at Greenloop for a week and the results have been overwhelmingly positive. I will try and post some numbers as a follow up at the end of the test.

If you are interested in using this pattern on your eCommerce site and need development assistance Suimple can help you add “The Mode” to your arsenal of ecommerce marketing tools.