Need a second opinion on whether to buy that new dress? Social Retailing™ may soon allow you to “virtually” try on clothing in-store and transmit a live video feed of your image to any email, cell phone or digital device for immediate feedback from friends or family.

Unveiled at the 2007 National Retail Federation’s annual conference, IconNicolson’s concept uses Near Field Communication technology to superimpose clothing on a shopper’s mirrored reflection. The concept then melds live video feeds with text messaging, IM and email interface capabilities right in the fitting room.

Customers can choose from a full complement of styles, colors, patterns and accessories—even if the store doesn’t have them in stock. Clothes can be ordered, purchased and shipped without stepping outside the fitting room.

Through advanced technological design and the immediacy of online social networking, the Social Retail™ concept promises to extend the best of today’s tangible offline and intangible online customer experiences.

Cost Benefit

The online system allows for improved shrinkage and inventory management as well as database development of what’s hot and what’s not, which is sure to be a hit with buyers charged with picking seasonal winners. And, the added benefit of instant approval from friends or relatives could make impulse buys more impulsive than ever.

But Will It Fit?

It remains to be seen whether consumers are so accustomed to entering personal information online that they’re prepared to seed databases across the country with information about friends, family members and themselves.

And let’s not forget why the customer drove to the mall in the first place. It’s difficult to imagine virtually modeled clothing even remotely approaching the experience of the real thing. After all it is all about “You” in this brave new social media world.

Alterian’s recent survey of more than 500 direct marketers found 85% planned to increase online marketing expenditures in 2007.

Remarkably, of those direct marketers, marketing services providers and agencies queried, 70% said they perform little or no results analysis to determine the effectiveness of their online campaigns, despite the availability of accurate testing and measuring tools.

One Analytic Does Not Fit All

Optimized online marketing effectiveness is accomplished by testing, measuring and analyzing data from a variety of metrics, then redeploying the campaign reflecting lessons learned from the assessment. Analysis generally falls into one of two categories, quantitative or qualitative.

Quantitative Optimization

Quantitative optimization involves testing different design versions and allowing your customers’ response to identify the more favorable layout. These tests are often referred to as A/B or multivariate testing. Proper assessment and subsequent application of quantitative data can substantially enhance campaign conversion rates.

Qualitative Optimization

Live usability testing and focus groups are examples of qualitative research techniques that can be used to validate quantitative findings or expose information quantitative analysis is incapable of providing. Qualitative research can help ferret out usability issues, behavioral tendencies or navigational inconsistencies that can quickly distract or lose today’s impatient online visitors.

Or Just Ask

Understanding where and why conversion rates drop off only provides part of the story. Often the customer will alert you to obstacles to success you haven’t even considered, if you just ask. Online surveys can complete the picture and reveal additions or modifications impossible to gather from behavioral data alone.

Too Much Data, Lacking Expertise or Time

Honing the design, messaging, timing and other aspects of your email campaign based on proper assessments of empirical data is crucial to optimizing online marketing results. However, analytical tools are often inaccessible, arcane or overwhelmingly voluminous.

Consider working with a competent design firm that can help assess your marketing efforts and optimize the return on your online investment with appropriate brand considerations and design aesthetics.

When the World Wide Web (www) was initially created, documents had rudimentary formatting options such as bold, italic and underline, and font, size and color were set with font tags. Everything was embedded within the HTML (hypertext markup language). Changing the background color, font or the width of a page required editing every single page of the site. More complex sites used tables, but they too were clunky, with nested tables that buried content, making it difficult to update as well.

Web developers soon realized that content and formatting serve quite different purposes and set out to separate them. They created Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a set of rules that tell a web browser how to display HTML content. CSS set the background color, size of headers, paragraph font, color of navigation links and the indentation for block quotes, bullets, etc. Since formatting generally does not change from page to page, an entire website can reference the same CSS, and global formatting changes can be accomplished with one edit.

HTML now defines only the basic elements of a site—navigation and content—and is changed only when content is updated.

HTML and CSS are clean, lightweight and intuitive, making both website content and formatting easier to update and maintain.

Not only is Google the number one search engine, it’s also the best place to work according to Fortune Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2007 list.

An intentionally unconventional company, Google understands employees spend long hours on their Mountain View, California campus. To reward their hard work and loyalty, there aren’t many perks Google doesn’t offer. In addition to the conventional child care, concierge and on-site gym, they also offer 11 gourmet cafeterias and enough snack areas to ensure no employee is more than 150 feet away from a food source. All free.

Other amenities include access to five campus doctors compliments of Google, and no cost laundry rooms—even the soap is free. For your car, on-site car washes and oil changes.

Want to bring your dog to work? Sure. Got your eye on a hybrid car? Google will give you $5,000 toward its purchase. Having a baby? They’ll reimburse you up to $500 for take out food your first four weeks at home.

Employees also have a climbing wall, swimming pool, Foosball and a variety of other diversions when they’re ready to take a break.

Beyond fun, food, and personal conveniences, Google puts its money where its mouth is. To reward employee innovation, they offer compensation incentives including special bonuses and a Founders award that can grant an employee millions of dollars.

The word is out, Google treats their employees well. Approximately 1,300 people a day submit a résumé in hopes of witnessing first-hand just how well.

Touted by his personal emcee as “The World’s Only Bipedal Humanoid Robot,” Honda’s Asimo showed off for the world, sprinting across the stage at the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The talking automaton (an endearing term) expresses an eerily sentient persona—as if he really does have personal needs. In fact, note his foot shuffling warm-up as his “trainer” discusses his next feat. An engineering marvel and big top sideshow all in one, Asimo certainly seemed to captivate the CES crowd.

I’ve not spent much time considering the use for such a machine, but he might go over very well with exceedingly wealthy consumers.

And, is it just me or does little Asimo have all the markings of a direct descendant of Rosie?