From 'horseless carriages' to 'taping' things on digital video recorders, as technology changes, language can take time to catch up. Yet, it is not just the way we describe things that is slow to change. How we conceive of things takes time to evolve, too.
Go and look at any online shop. The design heritage from the catalogue business is usually pretty clear. There may be menus, search boxes, zoomable images and so on, but ultimately the evolutionary antecedents are clear.
This is not about good or bad store design. There are some outstanding practitioners in online retail, with a command of multivariate testing, search and data management that has created very successful businesses. There are also some terrible online retailers, which pay little attention to the users' experience of the site.
Nonetheless, for both paragons and pariahs, the conceptual basis of an online store is the catalogue.
On a functional basis, this makes sense. These are, after all, the things we have to sell. We will make them as attractive as possible and try to use what we know about you to make smart recommendations, but ultimately we put them on a page for you to buy.
Online shops are features-driven, rather than benefits-driven. The products within them may be sold on their benefits, but the shops themselves stop short at the features. This makes it all the more interesting when someone truly breaks the mould.
Polyvore.com is not going to win any prizes for its name. I'm not sniffy about mixing Greek and Latin, but it's ugly and doesn't represent anything meaningful. However, what the site actually does is very interesting.
For some people, clothes shopping is a leisure pursuit - a creative challenge, and not just in the financial logic used to justify purchases. They enjoy the process of putting a wardrobe together from different places on the high street.
Polyvore recreates this process online. Drawing together clothes, accessories, shoes, images and text, users can create style boards including hundreds of designers. From Gap to Vivienne Westwood, and Balenciaga to Dorothy Perkins, clothes can be mixed, matched and styled together.
Users can then share their creation with others, discuss it, blog about it and take part in retailer-created competitions. Most importantly, they can buy everything on the site, which acts as an affiliate to dozens of retailers.
Polyvore fulfils several functions: it acts as a social media site for people who are interested in fashion; it is a creative outlet, where users share their originality and imagination; and it offers a personal shopping service, that does not tie users to one store.
Similar operators are likely to take off because a few big online retailers, such as Tesco, have taken a bold step. They are opening up their application programming interface - the code that enables developers to create new apps. This could lead to specialist stores that use the retailers' infrastructure and then earn a commission on sales.
The idea is to encourage the same explosion of creativity that followed the launch of the iPhone. That innov-ation spawned tens of thousands of apps for the device, each of which drove sales for Apple. That kind of creativity could seriously raise the bar for what we expect from online shops.
Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level
30 seconds on... Polyvore.com
- Polyvore.com claims it is 'the best place to discover or start fashion trends'.
- It acts as an online shop for partner brands, such as Dorothy Perkins and Converse, with a social media twist - members can design outfit 'sets' from clothes sold on the site and share their creations with other users.
- Each item in members' sets is linked to the page of the website selling that product.
- Members are encouraged to design their own sets using a celebrity as inspiration. The 'Top celebrities' listed in this section include the Olsen twins and Kate Moss.
- The website also lists 'Top trends', such as floral dresses and 'boyfriend blazers', which are ranked according to the number of outfit sets submitted to the categories.
- Polyvore.com's blog, at blog.polyvore.com, contains pearls of wisdom such as 'the purple trench [coat] isn't just for Willy Wonka'.
- The 'fashion 2.0' company, which created polyvore.com, was founded in 2007 and has its offices in California.