US software maker Adobe has announced an upgrade to Scene7, its rich media platform used primarily by e-commerce websites to improve their user-experience for online shoppers.
Scene7 allows retailers to incorporate video, 3D modelling and other interactive elements into their online catalogues, in turn giving users a better sense of their products and a more immersive online shipping experience.
According to Sheila Dahlgren, product marketing director for Adobe, eight of the top ten online retailers already use Scene7.
The new update to Scene7 is specifically designed to cater to mobile website and apps. Changes include the capacity for images to be resized on the fly to fit mobile screen sizes, multi-touch, pinch-to-zoom and Flash support. Adobe Flash is currently only supported on Android handsets running version 2.2 (Froyo) of the Android operating system but Scene7 will be still be able to deliver content through non-Flash formats as necessary.
While Scene7 supports both, Adobe is currently focusing on websites over apps for online shopping. According to Ms Dahlgren, it is easier to conduct comparative shopping through multiple tabs or pages in a web browser than through an app, and web functionality allows multiple devices to to get the same experience at once, instead of having separate app for different operating systems.
The new Scene7 will also include the integration of SiteCatalyst, an analytics tool that will allow retailers to track a detailed range of activity on their sites.
With the new Scene7, Adobe is throwing its weight behind both online and mobile shopping. A recent survey by Millennial Media and comScore has shown that mobile marketing is becoming more important as more smartphone users turn to their mobile for shopping.
The survey of 10,000 US smartphone users shows that of the 8% who are currently mobile shoppers, 27% had purchased or browsed items on their handsets in the previous month, while 73% had shopped across mobile, online and physical channels.
