Shopcade: Content Merchandising Lite
Econsultancy recently profiled Shopcade, a trends-based social shopping site that wants to create a digital mall experience. The site combines social media features (such as profile pages and personal recommendations) with flash sale features (users "earn rewards and unlock exclusive prizes from some of the world's best-loved brands" based on their site activity).
The result is a Pinterest-esque homepage studded with images and minimal text.
Finally, Social Commerce?
Shopcade's communications director Roxanne Varza claims the site wants to make e-commerce more interactive.
"Shopping has always been a social activity but shopping online is more solitary and less fun than going to the mall with friends. Therefore, the Shopcade idea came from wanting to create a fun, social shopping environment online," Varza told Econsultancy.
Wanted: Product Descriptions
The site takes a very lackadaisical approach to content merchandising. Product descriptions appear to be pulled directly from many different e-commerce sites and then squished to the edge of readability. Paragraph breaks? Bullet points? Unfortunately, in this case a picture is not worth a thousand words.
Varza did say that "soon, merchants will have the option to pay a monthly fee for customized and branded pages with more functionality and analysis."
You can read the full Shopcade interview at econsultancy.com.
