Media-Hive

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a big deal…maybe even a huge deal. In recent years, some would have you believe that RSS would be the next panacea of the internet. As the data exchange format to end all data exchange formats, it would be the future of everything we consume online- neatly wrapped as RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom, etc.

To date, RSS has yet to meet those expectations. But it has become an essential tool for direct customer communications- and could someday overtake email as the primary means for communicating with your online user base- no SPAM, the kids use it more than email, it can be delivered through multiple channels and read by any number of readers… It’s easy to see the ‘pros’ to email’s ‘cons’.

This trend toward RSS was largely driven by exponential growth in the blogosphere. In 2007, despite a perceived decline in new blog growth, Technorati published findings which argued just the opposite- that an average in excess of 120,000 new blogs were being created every single day.

The vast majority these blogs include some flavor of RSS feed, to which any interested user can subscribe using one of the expanding list of free tools available to them online. And to top it off, blog posts and updates are pushed to these users through no additional effort of their own- they just appear as they become available. Imagine a custom-tailored daily newspaper, delivered right to your screen, free from SPAM and distractions, ready and waiting for you the moment you decide to take a gander- now you start to see some of the inherent benefits to RSS.

RSS has become the defacto means by which many internet users get their daily news, weekly opinion, inspiration and occasional laugh. However, in 2008 possibly the most popular online channel continues to misuse, misunderstand, and flat-out-ignore the benefits of RSS: that’s right, we’re talking about you, Online Retail. Even today, as RSS is solidifying its place in the annals of syndicated content history, very few online retail stores have found a way to successfully integrate RSS into their list of marketing tools and primary customer touchpoints.

Far be it from us to throw accusations about the online retail industry around like so lightly- we need proof. So we grabbed a nearby copy of the Internet Retailer Top 500 list from a year or so ago, and scrutinized the top five (the big players) to see what- if any- RSS presence they had online:

Amazon.com

Unsurprisingly, for Amazon’s bleeding-edge presence and well earned #1 e-tailer position, it has a very extensive RSS provision around its tagging system (they launched this Q1 2007). Combined with Amazon’s various API interfaces, their use of RSS makes user access to new data a breeze. So if you want to track the most popular products tagged with “sci-fi” you’d just subscribe to http://www.amazon.com/rss/tag/sci-fi/popular/.

Office Depot

A quick google search didn’t pull up anything obvious on the first page or so. They do have the RSS icon at the bottom, which links to what appears to be their most recent offers feed, via feedburner. I was unable to find any other feeds to any of the products they carry.

Staples

Staples as some RSS coverage, and various “deal” RSS feeds. Staples also mentions that any RSS icon gives access to a feed to which users can subscribe - but I was unable to find any such icons on pages I would want to subscribe to, like: “clearance”; “special offers”; and “new to Staples”.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is on a par with, if not one up on, Amazon. Their RSS landing page has links to over 40 RSS feeds which, although not as user-controllable as Amazon’s feeds, pretty much cover all the things that most users would want to track and receive updates on.

Now, if we step away from the big guns and pick a few well known Fortune 500 retailers who have invested greatly in their web presence, the number who have RSS available for anything quickly drop off. Here’s a short list of retailers who have no RSS data available for users:

Gap Inc.

All of their brands lack RSS in any way. This includes Old Navy, Gap, Banana Republic and Piperlime.

J Crew

J Crew- one of the more innovative smaller online e-tailers- has no RSS available to shoppers.

Apple

Apple should know better. They produce software that makes working with RSS as easy as reading your mail. Although they have RSS for Apple company news, and a very nice feed creator for the music they have in their iTunes store, there is no RSS for products in their online store.

Gamestop

Gamestop is a billion-dollar online retailer, with a product that updates almost daily with new releases, yet they have no RSS feeds for any of the data which could be pushed to potential customers.

Zappos

Zappos one of the most progressive online e-tailers, and does utilize RSS- but not in a very standard format. They have the most common all new products feed, and some of the drilled-down sub pages have associated feeds, but others do not. So Adidas does, but Slippers does not.

A very disappointing set of results, all in all. RSS is neither technologically ground-breaking nor difficult to implement, so it’s surprising that the majority of online retailers have yet to embrace RSS and syndicate nearly every aspect of their product catalogs. It’s really is as simple as it sounds: just render the existing page as a structured XML file. In essence, you’re presenting your catalog in two formats: one is HTML/XHTML; the other, RSS or ATOM. The benefit? Inform your current and potential customers of product updates, sales and promotions, new content, etc.- all without expecting them to come looking for it. Think of it as an individually targeted marketing program where the customer has explicitly asked for real-time information about your company and product catalog.

So why haven’t retailers fully embraced this Really Simple technology? We’re not entirely sure, but we can imagine many retailers are thinking, “…but then they won’t visit our site and we can’t cross-sell and up-sell to them using our multi million dollar personalization and promotion system.”

And retailers- as the experts in their own field- may have a point. But as developers, consumers, and partners of retailers across the country, we’d rather look at it as: “Now you can push the cross-sell and up-sell to your customers using our multi-million dollar personalization and promotion system, without spending millions trying to entice them to visit your site.”