When shopping online becomes a personal experience

Shopping online is usually a solitary experience. It’s all between us and our computer. Electronic payments, automated messages, automated delivery, and the goods show up magically at our door (usually when we are not home) without any apparent human intervention. It’s convenient, efficient, anonymous, sterilized, and creepy.

But in the world of The Long Tail, small and tiny businesses flourish online. Via Caterina, I discovered Etsy, an online marketplace for handmade stuff where I bought a birthday present for my husband. It was a sushi candle making kit. As soon as I ordered the kit, Nikola Davidson from Sticky Wicket Crafts wrote me an e-mail. She actually wrote it. A real, personal, kind e-mail.

Antonella – thank you for your order! It shipped out today. Thanks for supporting Sticky Wicket Crafts! 🙂 Nikola

The e-mail did not say: "This is an automatically generated message. Do not reply to this message." So I wrote her back, like you do with a real person, thanking her and explaining why I bought the sushi candles.

Nikola,
thank you for the personal message. In this era of automated reply systems, it’s so nice to get an e-mail from a person with first and last name!
The package arrived yesterday. I’ll open it on March 1st, for my husband’s birthday (when he leaves the corporate world, he wants to become a candle maker).
Antonella

Nikola replied:

Antonella – thanks for your nice email. I’m glad you liked the personal message. Thanks for encouraging my non-automated ways! I hope you and your husband like the kit! Thanks again, Nikola 🙂

When I opened the package, I found a nice handwritten note from Nikola.

People add value to things. The sushi candle kit looks and smells better because a person made it, put it in a box, and wrote a personal note to me. I feel as I know Nikola. A picture of her and her two children, B.B. and Ritzy, is posted on the Sticky Wicket Crafts website. I know that she lives in Seattle and if I happen to go there, I can find her at the Pike Place Market.

Suddenly, shopping online is not anonymous anymore. It’s about real people living in real places. Forget the mysterious vendors hiding behind E-bay nicknames. Forget electronic devices shipped directly from Shanghai to your home and made by some unknown worker in white clean suits.

Buying from Sticky Wicket Crafts was a wonderful customer experience. Amazon, are you listening? Internet shoppers: support small businesses on the net, benefit from the long tail, enjoy the wonderful diversity of human creativity you won’t find at Walmart. Shop at Etsy. Buy candles from Sticky Wicket Crafts. You’ll feel happy. I promise.

Tags: online shopping, experience, personal, candles, craft