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Yesterday we looked at examples of image zoom and alternate views, which can help customers experience the product better than one small view. A good photographer plus AJAX or Flash technology like Scene 7 or Magic Zoom can achieve this. But online retailers can go a step further and use photos that show products in use, or "in context." This can reduce a shopper's fears, uncertainties and doubts about a purchase like "how does this look on a person?" or "how large is this in real life?." Images can also "sell" by triggering an emotion, showing the quality or versatility of an item or illustrating a products features and benefits.

example of context for clothes. a tool that allows you to dress a doll, to see possible combinations

Is social media/Web 2.0 for retail just hype or an essential part of doing business in the 21st century? The Wikipedic definition of Web 2.0 is "a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online." Wikipedia, being a user-generated knowledge base, is itself Web 2.0. In the ecommerce context, Web 2.0 includes leveraging social commerce on your own site, blogging/podcasting and participating in social networks like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter - and anywhere you or your customers can create and share content. Retailers often wonder what Web 2.0 / social media activities to be involved with, so this post ranks what I believe are the top 10 Web 2.0 activities for ecommerce based on their business impact.

In our effort to help users search all the world's public videos, the Google Video team joined the Sitemaps folks to introduce Video Sitemaps-an extension of the Sitemap Protocol that helps make your videos more searchable via Google Video Search. By submitting this video-specific Sitemap in addition to your standard Sitemap, you can specify all the video files on your site, along with relevant metadata.