The panel examining how to take advantage of Web 2.0 technologies for online selling is kicking off. It’s an impressive lineup with Gartner’s Gene Alvarez moderating and a panel of experts from Web 2.0 companies PowerReviews, BazaarVoice and Scene 7, as well as e-commerce executives from Road Runner Sports, The Finish Line and Vitamin Shoppe Direct.

The ongoing industry discussion about Web 2.0 is almost always from a consumer/user perspective, so it’s really interesting to sit through Web 2.0 sessions that are intended for sellers. One persistent theme is about who is in control (see post about David Towers’ session).

A really interesting point was raised by BazaarVoice about customer reviews giving customers a megaphone. If they need to, they will use it to shout at you, even if it’s not about a product review, per se. So before implementing reviews, make sure things like customer service are operating the way they need to. PowerReviews added that customer reviews are supposed to be about product reviews, not about company, service or price. Both companies agreed that you need to make sure the user communicty understands that at the outset, so you moderate reviews appropriately if they veer off the topic of product performance.

Also, Vitamin Shoppe pointed out that what the community aspects of Web 2.0 technologies do is force the company to live up to its brand promise, or risk the very vocal ire of customers. You can’t control what the customers are going to say, except by doing the best you can to reflect your brand in the online experience you create. Vitamin Shoppe starts by observing actual customers shopping in actual stores and monitoring their experiences.

This actually points to another emerging theme…the idea that customers’ online experiences should mimic their offline experiences (assuming the latter is an optimal one, I assume!)

A question was posed about how online sellers can determine where to start with Web 2.0. Several panel members answered quite correctly that they need to understand what drives their business, prototype, test, experiment. All of these are reasonable responses.

But Gene Alvarez couldn’t resist falling back into analyst mode (answering questions instead of asking them) and really boiled it down from a rich media perspective:

  • Make it as easy as possible to take the money - use single page check-out
  • Make the product self-descriptive - if a user mouses over it, pop up the information

While the bluntness of Gene’s response got some laughs, he really has a point. Let’s face it, people are shopping online because they want to buy something. Perhaps the best thing sellers can do is to let them do it easily.

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