A Bologna and Milan, Italy, -based company, Yoox is one of the best e-Commerce website I’ve ever visited – alongside with the AppleStore probably. Many thanks to Deborah for showing it to me. Yoox doesn’t intend to sell everything: it focuses on its core body of knowledge, in other words ‘fashion’ (Italians..makes sense!). Some people still think washing machines or cellphones are sold the same way a customer willing to buy a pair of jeans or a cardigan is being dealt with, whilst these are completely averse businesses. This being said…

I was really thrilled by the simplicity of the concept, aiming at reproducing a brick-and-mortar shopping experience. Have a look at the left column: you first either chose the designer or the category, then, exactly like in a real, not virtual, shop, you chose your prefered colour and size. It’s like talking to the shopkeeper: ‘what exactly do you need? a favourite designer, maybe? price range? colour? size?’. Too many Internet entrepreneurs tend to forget that e-Commerce has something to do with selling to a customer. In this respect, reproducing a real life situation we’ve ALL experimented tends to reduce one’s risk and hence enhances customer faithfulness – provided that execution (ie delivery) is perfect of course.

Still, the technology behind the website is everything but trivial: rich media (embedded flash), xml, Ruby, XSLT, .Net, SQL Server (I’m guessing), etc. It’s all there.

I managed to spot 2 little shortcomings though: total absence of social shopping features (this may harm in the long run) + not up-to-date, ie take a look @ the top-middle sentence “Free standard delivery extended until new year’s eve”, and we’re on January 3rd 2007.

Still, as far as I see it, Yoox is definitely a winner. It sells on 4 continents, and something tells me we’re to hear / read more and more about it in the upcoming months.

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