Patent Application
20080091548
The detailed description is described with reference to the accompanying figures. In the figures, the left-most digit(s) of a reference number identifies the figure in which the reference number first appears. The use of the same reference numbers in different figures indicates similar or identical items.
This disclosure is directed to electronic marketplaces accessible via a network, such as the Internet. Such marketplaces are often called c-commerce or merchant websites and, in the case of the Internet, are located at various domains across the World Wide Web. In particular, the following discussion pertains to electronic marketplaces that are developed around a concept or niche.
As an overview, each concept-centric electronic marketplace is launched as a sub-domain of a host domain, where the host domain may itself host a merchant website. As one example, suppose there are one or more sub-domains created from a root domain with a domain name of “domain.com”. The sub-domains might be given domain names such as “concept1.domain.com”, “concept2.domain.com”, and so on, where the “concept1” and “concept2” portions of the domain names pertain to various concepts around which the electronic marketplaces are designed.
The concept-centric electronic marketplaces may offer for sale items that are related to that concept or niche. Such items are identified and associated with the marketplace by assigning semantic information related to the concept. In one implementation, the items are assigned one or more semantic tags related to the concept. Tags are pieces of information separate from, but related to, the items. Each item is assigned at least one primary tag that associates the item with the sub-domain site. The primary tag is selected by the site operator who is establishing the concept-centric electronic marketplace. In one implementation, the tag applied to the items is identical to a portion of the sub-domain name. Continuing our example, items that appear on the electronic marketplace at “concept.domain.com” are thus assigned the tag “concept”. For instance, suppose the concept for one electronic marketplace is to sell jewelry and the concept for another electronic marketplace is to sell items that are black. The sub-domains for these marketplaces might be “jewelry.domain.com” and “black.domain.com”, with the corresponding primary tags being “jewelry” and “black”.
The items may further, or alternatively, be assigned one or more secondary tags that are not identical to the name portion of the sub-domain, but are nevertheless related to the concept. These secondary tags might include descriptors to characterize or otherwise describe attributes of the items. The secondary tags may be chosen by the operator when establishing the sub-domain site, or in a collaborative environment, by a community of many different users. For instance, for the jewelry-based electronic marketplace at “jewelry.domain.com”, the items made available at that site might be assigned tags such as “rings”, “necklaces”, and “diamonds”. With this additional flexibility, the site operator (or users of the site) can assign tags that are descriptive and might also specify properties of an item that may not otherwise be obvious from the item itself. Permitting different tags that are nonetheless associated with the concept enables the electronic marketplace to better support customer navigation, content searching, and item comparison.
In some cases, the concept-centric marketplaces may be multi-merchant marketplaces. Thus, each single item may also have one or more listings or offers to sell that item. Such offers may include charge-per-click offers.
Once established, the concept-centric electronic marketplace found at the sub-domain can support additional features to provide a rich user experience. The site may include commentary and analysis on the various items. Shoppers may be permitted to compare and contrast various items. The electronic marketplace may further provide a collaboratively-defined item encyclopedia, where users author descriptions of new items or edit existing item descriptions authored previously by themselves or others. As a result, the item descriptions become more accurate and uniform over time, thereby improving the user's ability to find items of interest on the electronic marketplace. Through this collaboration, users might be further empowered to define additional tags that characterize the items and identify attributes of the items. Over time, the collaboratively defined tags form a folksology (an attributed folksonomy) to categorize the items offered at the marketplace. Once assigned to items, the tags may be used to locate and organize the items, as well as facilitate comparison of various items.
In an alternative implementation, the concept-centric electronic marketplace may provide advertisements pertaining to the concept, rather than offering items for sale. The advertisements may be selected and placed on the marketplace by the sub-domain site operator. The rich content discussed above may also be included at the site, thereby providing a visitor with information about the concept as well as advertisements for products and services relating to the concept.
For purposes of discussion, the tag-driven concept-centric electronic marketplace is described in the following exemplary environment in which items are offered for sale. However, it should be appreciated that such marketplaces may be implemented in other environments, including ones in which advertisement serves as the revenue model rather than item sales.
Example System Architecture
Each website 104(1)-104(W) is hosted on one or more servers. In the illustrated arrangement, the website 104(1) is hosted on one or more servers 108(1), . . . , 108(N), the website 104(2) is hosted on one or more servers 110(1), . . . 110(J), and the website 104(W) is hosted on one or more servers 112(1), . . . , 112(K). In one implementation, the servers might be arranged in a cluster or as a server farm, although other server architectures may also be used to host the site. Each website is capable of handling requests from many users and serving, in response, various web pages that can be rendered at the user computing devices 102(1)-102(M). The websites 104(1)-104(W) can be essentially any type of website that offers items for sale, including online retailers, informational sites, search engine sites, news and entertainment sites, and so forth.
In the exemplary environment, the website 104(1) represents a merchant website that hosts an electronic catalog with one or more items. An item can be anything that the merchant wishes to offer for sale, or that others using the merchant's website wish to offer for sale. An item can include a product, a service, or some other type of sellable unit.
In
An item manager 118 facilitates access to and management of the item records 114 in the catalog 116. The item manager 118 allows the website operator to add or remove items to the catalog 116, and generally maintain control of the items offered on the website 104(1). When a user requests information on an item from the website 104(1), one or more servers 108(1)-108(N) retrieve the item information from the item catalog 116 and serve one or more web pages containing the information to the requesting user computing device. The database 116 may therefore contain static web pages that are pre-generated and stored prior to such requests, or alternatively store data that is used to populate dynamic web pages that are generated in response to such requests.
The merchant website 104(1) also has a checkout system 120 that processes customers' purchases of items from the item catalog 116. The checkout system 120 facilitates user confirmation of items for purchase, collects payment and shipping information from the customers, provides electronic receipts to the customers, and then hands off delivery of the purchase to a fulfillment system (not shown).
Together, the servers 108(1)-108(N), item catalog database 116, item manager 118, and checkout system 120 form an electronic marketplace that resides at a specific domain on the Internet. For discussion purposes, suppose that the domain has a domain name identified by the URL (universal resource locator) “domain.com”.
A second website 104(2) represents another e-commerce website that hosts an electronic catalog with one or more items. The second website 104(2) is hosted on one or more servers 110(1)-110(J) and has its own item catalog database 122, item manager 124, and checkout system 126 that is separate from those of the host website 104(1). Together, the servers 110(1)-110(J), item catalog database 122, item manager 124 and checkout system 126 form another electronic marketplace that resides on the Internet. This marketplace is a concept-centric marketplace that is developed around a concept or theme. Hence, the second website 104(2) may be referred to as a concept-centric website. Items offered on the concept-centric website 104(2) relate to the concept. For instance, the concept might be jewelry, and the concept-centric marketplace is developed around the niche of selling jewelry online.
The concept-centric website 104(2) is formed as a sub-domain of the host domain website 104(1). In the Domain Name System (DNS) hierarchy, a sub-domain is a domain that is part of a larger domain. The DNS stores and associates many types of information with domain names, and translates domain names to IP addresses. In the illustrated example, the sub-domain has a domain name identified by “sub.domain.com”, which is a sub-domain of “domain.com” as exemplified by the naming structure of a prefix word “sub”, followed by a separating dot “.”, followed by the domain name “domain.com”. It is noted that the sub-domain website 104(2) may be physically hosted on the same set of servers used to host the first website 104(1) (i.e., the servers 108 and 110 are all part of the same server system) or hosted on separate servers that are still owned and operated by a common entity (i.e., such as the merchant that owns the merchant website 104(1)). Alternatively, the sub-domain website 104(2) may be physically hosted on servers 110 that are independent from servers 108, and separately owned and operated.
A third website 104(W) illustrated in
Returning again to the concept-centric website 104(2), it forms an electronic marketplace where item selection, merchandising, and marketing are provided by a different party than the owner/operator of the host website 104(1). Even though the concept-centric website 104(2) is a sub-domain of the host website, the third party owner and operator develops the theme, look and feel, and user experience independently of the host website. To launch the sub-domain site 104(2), the operator registers with the host domain to reserve a particular sub-domain. The sub-domain operator may also register the one or more tags used to identify items to be sold via the sub-domain's marketplace. The sub-domain operator may also provide information to support revenue sharing in the event that items provided by the host merchant website are sold on the concept-centric marketplace of the sub-domain. This registration might be done, for example, by visiting a registration location online at the host website 104(1).
The sub-domain operator may consist of a single person, a community of people, a single legal entity, or multiple entities. As one example, a group of part-time hobbyists might come together to form an electronic marketplace based on their hobby, and the work collectively together to manage, merchandise, and update the sub-domain site. The sub-domain may also be established as a non-profit legal entity so that revenue derived from selling items flows to the benefit of the non-profit organization or some other cause.
Once the concept-centric website 104(2) is built, the operator decides what types of items will appear on the site to fit within the concept. The items may be existing items already being offered on the host website 104(1) as well as items being offered on one or more other websites 104(W). In one implementation, the sub-domain operator identifies items that will appear on the concept-centric site 104(2) by searching other websites, including at “domain.com” hosted by the host website 104(1) and at other websites 104(W). Once items are identified, the sub-domain operator associates tags with those items. The tags relate to the concept. Any number of tags may be used and associated with the items selected.
In
As illustrated in
Once the items are selected and tagged, the concept-centric sub-domain site is ready to launch. Users can then access the concept-centric electronic marketplaces at “sub.domain.com” independently of the marketplace hosted by the host website 104(1). Indeed, it is anticipated that the marketplaces would have a different look and feel so that the users may not even know that the two domains are affiliated in a domain and sub-domain relationship.
As shown in
To better illustrate the user experience when visiting the two different marketplaces,
The search tool 208 allows the user to locate items in the item catalog 116. By entering one or more key terms, users can search that catalog 116 in an effort to identify possible items matching those key terms. If one or more items exist, the website serves a web page with information about the item. The user may also access other web pages with product offerings by following the navigation links 206 or links provided in the zeitgeist 204.
In this illustration, the web page 300 includes a feature pane 302 that features one particular digital camera (i.e., “Olympus Stylus 800 Digital”). This feature pane 302 includes an image 304 of the camera and a brief description 306. The feature pane 302 further includes a search tool 308 that invites the user to search for other cameras available at the concept-centric marketplace or to locate information on cameras in general, regardless of whether they are offered for sale on the site.
The search tool 308 allows users to search for items and features of those items by searching on tags that may be associated with the items. As noted above, all items are tagged with “camera”, but may also be assigned other tags that are descriptive of the item or specify features or properties of the items. These tags may be assigned by the manufacturer or supplier of the items, the sub-domain site operator, or users. The tagging is free-form in that anyone can add any tag. In some implementations, however, the site operator has final authority over the collection of tags and the items on the sub-domain (e.g., whether to allow users to add tags, or tag other items to add them to the electronic catalog, or otherwise manage existing tags). The tagging structure will be described below in more detail with reference to
To provide an even richer user experience, the concept-centric electronic marketplace may further support other forums for sharing and discussing cameras. For instance, the sub-domain marketplace might include commentary and analysis of cameras provided by professional photographers. Or, perhaps well-known camera experts might maintain an electronic web-log (or “blog”) discussing the latest innovations in cameras. The sub-domain site might further support a community aspect where a community of hobbyists can comment via discussion boards or add content by creating and/or editing product description or authoring wiki-type articles. To support these rich experiences, the web page 300 may include links 310 to blogs (e.g., “cam-blog”) or to articles (e.g., “wiki-cam”). Here, the links are illustrated with underlining, although in practice the links may be represented using other techniques, such as color variation.
The sub-domain website 104(2) may provide rich authoritative information on the various items available at the concept-centric marketplace. This information may be created and controlled by the site operator and/or created by a community of users. Thus, the sub-domain website 104(2) may provide controls to assist users in creating new articles about items on the concept-centric electronic marketplace. These articles may include any information helpful to a user in learning about the item and deciding whether to purchase the item. Such information may include descriptions of the items, features and specification data, images of the item, intended uses, identities of manufacturers or distributors, accessories, and so on. These articles can be served by the servers 110 to the users to assist the users in better understanding the items.
In a collaborative implementation, the articles are community-authored, where any number of users may add, modify, or delete content contained in the article. Thus, individual users can author new articles and also edit existing articles crafted by other users. The edits can be logged and monitored to prevent malicious entries. Discussion pages, review history, and even the ability to watch pages may further be supported.
The web page 300 may further permit advertisements at the electronic marketplace. These advertisements might be, for example, targeted ads to camera users. In this example, an advertisement 312 offers a selection of camera cases.
With reference again to
When a user (e.g., user 102(M)) accesses the sub-domain site and purchases an item from the concept-centric marketplace, the checkout system 126 facilitates that purchase. The checkout system 126 facilitates user confirmation of items for purchase, collects payment and shipping information from the customers, provides receipts to the customers, and then hands off delivery of the purchase to a fulfillment system (not shown). It is noted that, in the illustrated implementation, the sub-domain site maintains its own checkout system 126 that is separate and independent from the checkout system 120 of the host domain. The fulfillment of the orders, however, may be facilitated by the fulfillment systems used by the merchant website 104(1) or other website 104(W).
Item Manager Implementation
The item manager 124 is implemented as software or computer-executable instructions stored in a memory 404 and executed by one or more processors 402. The item manager 124 is responsible for identification, selection, and management of the items 142(1), 142(2), . . . , 142(H) in the electronic catalog 122 exposed by the electronic marketplace. The item manager 124 includes an item tagging tool 410 to identify and tag items to be offered by the concept-centric electronic marketplace.
The item tagging tool 410 has a searching unit 412 and a user interface (UI) component 414. The searching unit 412 is employed to locate items that might be included in the sub-domain marketplace as relating to the concept. These items may reside at the merchant website 104(1) that hosts the general marketplace (i.e., at “domain.com”) and hence the searching unit 412 is used to search items 114 in the item catalog 116 (see
Selected items may then be assigned one or more semantic tags. A tagging entry box 606 allows the operator to enter names of tags to be assigned to the items. In one implementation, all items to be included on the concept-centric electronic marketplace are assigned a common tag that associates the item with the marketplace. For instance, the sub-domain site operator might tag selected items with an initial tag that is identical to, or at least closely related to, the concept. This initial tag may be referred to as the “primary tag”. As shown on screen 600, a primary tag name “sub” is entered into the tagging entry box 606. This primary tag “sub” is identical to the prefix portion of the sub-domain's name “sub.domain.com”. It is further noted that in one implementation, such an identical primary tag may be assigned automatically to each item upon selection of that item from the search list 602.
After initially tagging all items with a primary tag, in certain implementations, the site operator and/or members of the user community (under the operator's control) may also use the item tagging tool 410 to add other tags to the items. These other tags, which are referred to as “secondary tags”. might pertain to properties or characteristics of the items to help facilitate navigation and item comparison.
The item tags are maintained in association with the items through a tagging data structure 416 kept in the item catalog. With reference again to
As also shown in
A catalog search tool 420 is another software tool that executes on the one or more servers 10 to assist the user in locating items 140(1)-140(H) in the catalog 122. The catalog search tool 420 supports key word searches entered by the user into the search UI 308 (
Once the user locates an item and decides to make a purchase, the transaction is handled by the checkout system 126. The checkout system 126 leads the customer through a series of steps to ascertain the customer's name and address, preferred payment methodology, delivery information, and so forth.
The sub-domain site may further include an item encyclopedia 422, which facilitates creation and management articles 424(1), 424(2), . . . 424(F) describing the items 140 in the item catalog 122. The articles 424(1)-424(F) are stored in an article store 426.
The sub-domain site may further include a commentary framework 428 to facilitate user discussion and commentary of the products. The framework allows users to enter and post their commentary in any number of formats, including as a discussion board forum, a blog, or other formats. The framework further allows other users to offer feedback on the commentary.
An ad manager 430 is responsible for management of advertisements placed on the electronic marketplace, such as ad 312 in
Operation
For discussion purposes, the process is described with reference to the architecture 100 of
At 702(2), a prospective owner of the concept-centric website registers with the host domain to create a sub-domain. The sub-domain is named according to the concept. Thus, if a prospective owner of a sub-domain site wants to launch a marketplace centered on the theme “travel”, the prospective owner might submit a registration to the operator of the host domain, say “domain.com”, to register the sub-domain “travel.domain.com”. If another prospective owner of a different sub-domain site wants to launch a marketplace centered on items with the property of being small, the prospective owner might register the sub-domain “tinyitems.domain.com”. It is noted that the host operator may allow any number of sub-domains to be established.
In some situations, the host domain operator may decide to award sub-domains on a first-come-first-served basis. Thus, the site operator who is first to register a particular concept is awarded a corresponding sub-domain. In other situations, however, the host domain operator may elect not to release the requested sub-domain name, but instead may ask the registrant to choose a more narrowly descriptive name and wait to award the broader sub-domain name to the operator that shows the most promise at best operating that sub-domain. For example, suppose there are a number of registrants for electronic marketplaces that pertain to the concept of cameras. Rather than registering the sub-domain “cameras.stuffnthings.com” (which is broadly descriptive of the type of goods) to the first registrant, the host domain operator may ask every registrant to choose a more descriptive, narrower name, such as “bobscamearas.stuffnthings.com” or “premiumcameras.stuffnthings.com”. Then, over time, the host domain operator can watch how the various operators perform and ultimately award the broader name “cameras.stuffnthings.com” to the sub-domain operator that performs the best. This performance may be based on any number of criteria such as community feedback, traffic flow to the sub-domain site, sales volume, and so forth.
At 702(3), the newly created sub-domain is hosted at the host domain. For example, the servers used to host the domain “stuffnthings.com” are also used to host the sub-domain “camera.stuffnthings.com”, as well as any number of other sub-domains. With reference to
After the concept-centric electronic marketplace is established, items to be offered for sale on the electronic marketplace are identified (block 704 in
The items may be identified using the exemplary item tagging tool 410. As illustrated in
In other implementations, the items may be identified from one or more other websites. Again with reference to
Once items are identified, the items are assigned one or more tags (block 706 in
Other secondary tags may also be assigned to the items, either by the sub-domain operator or by users. Any number of secondary tags may be assigned to each item. These secondary tags are also associated with the items through the data structure. Using these secondary tags, users may search and compare items on the concept-centric electronic marketplace (block 708). For example, suppose a visitor to the sub-domain marketplace “cameras.stuffnthings.com” wants to find digital cameras and thus enter key words “digital” and “cameras”. The site search engine locates all items in the item catalog with a secondary tag “digital”. (Note that all items might be tagged with the primary tag “cameras”, so the search engine is configured filter results on the primary tag). From the search results, the visitor may compare the various items or filter them further to compare ones with additional characteristics, such as comparing digital cameras that are also “compact”. With the addition of this keyword, the list of items is further pared to those with a “compact” tag.
It is noted that discovery of items may be accomplished in ways other than through use of tags. For instance, in another approach, keyword searches may return a list of items and a user selects certain items of interest by highlighting the items, checking an associated box, or through other UI mechanisms.
Revenue Sharing
When registering and launching a concept-centric marketplace as a sub-domain website, the sub-domain operator enters into a business relationship with the domain operator. This relationship allows the sub-domain operator to use the sub-domain and to market items that are also included on the merchant website of the host domain. This relationship may or may not be exposed to the customers who visit the two sites. As part of this relationship, the domain and sub-domain operators may agree to a revenue sharing arrangement resulting from the sale of items on the concept-centric marketplace.
For purposes of discussion, suppose the first sub-domain 802(1) operates a niche marketplace based around a first concept, and this marketplace may be found on the World Wide Web at “concept1.domain.com”. Similarly, the Nth sub-domain 802(N) operates a different niche marketplace based around another concept, and this Nth marketplace may be found on the World Wide Web at “conceptN.domain.com”, A user 806 may visit any one of the online electronic marketplaces at the host domain 804 or one of the sub-domains 802(1)-802(N). The user 806 may go directly to the particular electronic marketplace by entering the domain name into a browser, or be referred to one of the sub-domains 802(1)-802(N) via a link exposed at the host domain 804.
The concepts for each sub-domain may be distinct form one another (e.g., jewelry, tools, ties, telescopes, DVD movies, etc.), or groups of sub-domains might share a common concept. As an example of this latter situation, suppose multiple proprietors are interested in registering sub-domains developed to market cameras. Rather than limiting registration to one sub-domain for cameras, the host domain may choose to register multiple sub-domains for cameras, with each sub-domain having its own unique domain name (e.g., “premiumcameras.domain.com”, “bobscamearas.domain.com”, etc.).
One particular business arrangement between the host domain 804 and the first sub-domain 802(1) will now be described with reference to
At 822, the first sub-domain 802(1) establishes its electronic marketplace by selecting from items 808 that are marketed and sold by the host domain 804. The identified items are tagged with a primary tag to associate them with the first electronic marketplace at the first sub-domain 802(1), as represented by tagged items 810. At 824, the user 806 visits the marketplace at the first sub-domain 802(1) and purchases one of the items. At 826, purchase revenue is passed from the user 806 to the sub-domain 802(1). At 828, a percentage of that revenue is shared with the host domain 804. In this arrangement, the host domain receives less revenue than had it sold the item directly to the user, but is expecting to increase overall revenues as a result of fostering many niche marketplaces that sell incrementally more items.
It is further noted that the operator of the sub-domain may be a group of individuals. In this case, the individuals may further elect to share the portion of the revenue allocated to the sub-domain. This secondary revenue sharing may be decided in a number of ways, including by contribution level, contract, or other techniques.
The first sub-domain 802(1) hosts an electronic marketplace that sells items selected in part from items 808 of the host domain 804 and in part from items 904 of the third party domain 902. The items selected from the different domains are tagged with a common primary tag to associates the items with the electronic marketplace at the first sub-domain 802(1), as represented by tagged items 906.
In a first scenario A, a user 908 visits the host domain 804. During that visit, the host domain 804 refers the user to the sub-domain 802(1), as pictorially represented by the dashed line from the user 908 through the domain 804 to the sub-domain 802(1). The user then purchases an item 906 from the first electronic marketplace at the sub-domain 802(1). Part of the revenue from this purchase is shared by the sub-domain operator with an operator of the host domain 804 for referral of the customer. Additionally, the amount of revenue shared with the host domain 804 for this referral may vary depending upon whether the customer 908 purchased an item 906 that could also be found on the host domain 804 (i.e., item 808) or on the third party domain 902 (i.e., item 904), where more revenue is shared in the former case and less revenue is shared in the latter case. Moreover, the revenue sharing arrangement for customer referral may be entirely separate and distinct from any sharing arrangement pertaining to the sale of items that are also found on the host domain 804, as described above with respect to
In a second scenario B, another user 910 visits the sub-domain 802(1) without being referred by the host domain 804. Upon purchase of an item 906 that was originally selected from the third party domain 902 for sale on the concept-centric marketplace of the sub-domain 802(1), a portion of the revenue is shared with operators of the third party domain 902, as represented by monetary flow arrow 912. Additionally, a small portion of the revenue may be shared with the host domain 804 for providing permission to operate the sub-domain. In this scenario, however, the amount of revenue that the host domain 804 receives is smaller than the revenue received in scenario A described above, as represented by the different sized “$” signs for scenarios A and B in the monetary flow arrow 914 from sub-domain 802(1) to domain 804.
Thus, there are many revenue sharing components that may be considered when establishing a relationship between the host domain 804 and each of the sub-domains 802(1)-802(N). These components include, but are not limited to, a component for being permitted to operate a sub-domain to the domain, a component for selling an item that is also marketed and sold by the host domain, and a component for receiving a referral from the host domain.
Although the subject matter has been described in language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described. Rather, the specific features and acts are disclosed as exemplary forms of implementing the claims.
