Concept:
Founded in 2007, Sesh.com is part of a new generation of social shopping platforms. Sesh furnishes online retailers with an interactive co-browsing and a real-time communication solution. Sesh provides one-click customer-to-customer group shopping within a retailer’s Web site, offering online retailers a new way to increase sales by enabling their own customers to offer instant purchase validation. Customers can also bring new shoppers to a retailer’s site when they invite friends to “sesh” with them.
The Team:
Headquartered in San Diego, CA, Jarrod Rogers is the CEO and inventor of the patent-pending technology. Rogers has more than 10 years experience leading and managing mission-critical software projects. His prior work inspired the collaboration engine Command Post of the Future (CPOF), a $220M military program.
Market Relevance:
Sesh brings a new version of “face-to-face” communication for e-commerce sites where consumers can share ideas while interacting with content. The platform offers synchronized, simultaneous communication on the Web. Catering to the growing buzz on social media, the technology encompasses the collective shopping experience of a brick and mortar store with new media tools.
Delivery:
Sesh features a one-click initiation, sending a shopper to a ‘sesh room’, which includes a shared visual of the retailer’s Web page, Chat and gesture communication drawing tools. Friends can be invited to join with a click as well, making viral promotions viable on the Web for the first time. There are no plug-ins or downloads for the shopper.
Sesh is a Software-as-a-Service solution that wraps the Web site, eliminating any installs on a retailer’s server. A Web site can be ‘seshable’ in a matter of weeks with code embedded into Web pages.
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Proof Points:
The Sesh technology has been developed to enable shoppers to interact live on retailer’s Web sites, receive purchase validation from friends, and make confident buying decisions. Sesh technology addresses retailers’ desire for increased customer interaction. Shoppers can have a more engaging online shopping experience as they socialize and shop with friends, just like at the mall.
Sesh is currently being deployed by art retailer Novica, a partner of National Geographic that sells the works of artists from around the world. Customers can share and discuss products with each other by drawing or chatting on the page. From a prompt directly below a shopper’s name on the upper left of the home page, the technology launches a system through Sesh.com that frames the web site, allowing a shopper to invite another registered Novica shopper to discuss products in a chat box, write notes on top of any section of a web page, and use pen tools to draw on the site. Co-browsing functionality also enables shoppers to navigate the site together, each taking turns guiding one another to different pages.