Today you probably have a list of items you bought last week, most likely stored online with your supermarket of choice. It's probably the first thing you bring up when it's time to conduct this weeks shop. The very vast majority of the items on that list are ideally staples that you will buy most weeks, perhaps afterwards scanning the "Specials" tab to see if there's anything on there enticing you to spend a few extra dollars.
I think WebSockets is radically going to change online grocery shopping in 3 special ways.
(1) It's a well known fact that you spend more money in-store than you do on-line. Why? Because of the advantage of visual stimulus, and retailers love it. There's a good reason why the milk and bread is at the back of the store, meaning you have to navigate past the impulse items to get to it. Retailers spent a lot of marketing dollars optimising their store layout and product placement to ensure they extract the maximum impulse shopping dollars from your wallet. Or perhaps hoping to visually remind you of an item you wanted but didn't have on your list as you walk past it.
This is an experience the retailers don't yet offer when you shop online. Online shopping today consists of a list of products, descriptions of each, pricing and perhaps a small thumbnail. You search for an item you want, check the price, and add it to your shopping basket. Or you let the system add it for you automatically based on last week's shop. So from the retailers perspective, how do they get back to capturing your impulse dollars?
Well I can see a day when, using WebSockets for efficient delivery of data to the Web application you're using to conduct your weekly shop, you'll be immersed in a very real visualisation of an actual shopping aisle. You'll be able to "virtually" push your trolley down the aisle and see items you want to buy. At the same time the retailer can offer promotions and specials based on your past shopping habits, your current virtual aisle location, and your personal preferences. Retailers hold a lot of valuable data about loyalty card holders, and being able to leverage that with what you're currently "seeing" on the shelves is very powerful. WebSockets is going to drive this real-time interaction between you the customer, and the retailers desire for you to buy more as you shop.
(2) Imagine now you're the retailer and the day came when you had real-time visibility into exact inventory status and sales, the moment they are conducted. I can see a day when using a Web browser, the boss of Tesco or Wal-Mart will get a very real, very rich, very dynamic view into exactly what items are being sold in what stores and when. Forget overnight batch updates from stores. Forget clunky old terminals and old technology for viewing stock status per store, per town, per country. The time will come when Web technology will drive highly interactive, rich dashboards that provide everything the store bosses need to know, now. WebSockets can make that happen.
(3) Supply chain. RFID is starting to take off in terms of being able to track everything, everywhere across the retail landscape. That's a lot of information being shoveled around. Aggregating all that data via the Web and delivering it in another rich Web-based application provides a brilliant mechanism by which a stock controller can track all aspects of the supply chain. I can see a day when WebSockets will constitute the best technology choice for bringing together RFID tag readers as stock leaves the warehouse, gets trucked to the store, and is placed on local inventory.
Fancy that, the Web making tomorrow's grocery shopping experience richer for you, and more lucrative for the retailer. WebSockets are up to the task today.
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