American Express Co. is making its presence known to online shoppers well before the checkout page.
The New York payments network on Nov. 11 announced an e-commerce tool that flags promotions available to its cardholders in search engine results and on individual retailer websites.
The inSite service displays an icon next to items in search results indicating when bonus rewards points, free shipping or another promotion is available for purchases at that merchant.
The service, provided through a web browser plug-in that users download for free, also displays such messages when browsing retailers’ websites. The advantage of this system is it keeps AmEx prominent throughout the shopping experience, AmEx says.
“Instead of pulling you out of your shopping … online, asking you to come to American Express to get that offer, we’re actually allowing you to continue shopping as you normally would,” Elizabeth Skinner, an AmEx vice president of marketing, says. “We are really just letting customers know there are certain benefits that they already have on their card and making sure while you are shopping you are aware of those benefits.”
AmEx developed inSite with Santa Clara, Calif.-based bill payment technology company Billeo Inc. Consumers redeem rewards by making purchases at the merchant websites in which they appear.
The inSite tool could gain favor among AmEx cardholders because it eliminates some of the steps often required to take advantage of special offers, including requiring a cardholder to visit a specific card issuer’s site to redeem, Nicole Sturgill, research director for delivery channels at TowerGroup in Needham, Mass., says.
“The hardest part about rewards are knowing when you get a reward if you’re shopping for something and you have to go to the rewards site,” she says.
From a delivery standpoint the inSite service “makes a lot of sense” because “you’re not having to go to multiple sites to see if you could get a deal somewhere else,” Sturgill adds. “If it actually pushes that information out to you instead of you having to go get it I think that’s the critical piece.”
The fact that inSite must be downloaded could deter some AmEx cardholders from using the service, Sturgill cautions.
Cardholders “have to understand what’s in it for them … to make them go get it,” Sturgill says.
Many of the inSite offers are similar to those an AmEx cardholder would see on the payments network’s Membership Rewards and Bonus Points Mall sites. The company plans to expand the number and type of offers over time, Skinner says.
“We’re leveraging our strong relationship across our merchant network to ensure we’ve got offers … that are over and above those that you would see” in the existing rewards program, she says.
The service currently includes offers from more than 250 merchants, including Barnes & Noble Inc., Crate & Barrel and others.
The inSite service is the latest example of a payments network rolling out a shopping technology aimed at increasing card spending at their merchant partners. s
MasterCard Inc. in April released MarketPlace, a website that contains discounts and bonus rewards offers on products. Visa Inc. has been promoting Rightcliq, a tool connected to a user’s Web browser that automatically fills in payment card information, including for non-Visa cards, at merchant sites and aggregates product listings.
“They’re each targeted in different ways and will probably have users that will prefer one environment versus another,” Beth Robertson, the director of payments research at Javelin Strategy and Research in Pleasanton, Calif., says.
The e-commerce market has been the fastest growing segment of retail in recent years and continued growing even during the last economic downturn, Robertson says.
“It’s not only growing domestically, it’s growing in other countries as well,” Robertson says. “So there’s also the opportunity to ultimately take applications like these to more of a global consumer and merchant base.”
