Adjusting the Web Rainbow

Baldwin Louie — Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:00:00 -0700

Lured by the natural-looking grass-green color displayed in a product image on her Web browser, Susan Dague of Piedmont, Calif., purchased a bathroom carpet from an online retailer earlier this year. The package that eventually arrived contained an unpleasant surprise: The rug was emerald-green. "It looked like Astroturf," Dague recalls.

On the Web, true color is hard to find, and Dague's experience is not unusual; retailers often end up disappointing online shoppers, with products in colors that don't match the image displayed on the Web site. Three companies have come up with competing approaches to fixing such online color bugaboos, but they've clearly not found a crackerjack solution for all users. For one, some of the approaches aren't applicable to notebook computers or flat-panel monitors. And because of the variability of desktop-computer monitors, the newness of online color-correction technologies, and Web users' online shopping habits, the jury is still out as to which strategy serves Web users best.

One thing is certain: Shoppers who go to the trouble of calibrating monitors themselves will be rewarded with more accurate color.

Imation, a Minneapolis, Minn.-based company that develops color-control applications for print publishers, believes the ability to correct color should be placed in the hands of Web shoppers. At Imation's Verifi.net site, launched in March, users can calibrate their monitors by answering seven questions about how they perceive reds, blues and greens. The software then downloads a cookie to a user's browser that makes tailored adjustments to the monitor the next time the user visits a site that has partnered with Imation. So far, only two art and design firms are using Verifi, but Imation is campaigning to get retail shopping sites to use the calibration software, according to Dave Veilleux, director of marketing and business development at the company's Internet imaging division.

The problem is, getting people to voluntarily go through the calibration steps can be tricky. E-Color, a San Francisco graphics firm, has offered a similar service, E-Color Tune-Up, since 1999. Although E-Color says the application provides a 98 percent reduction in color error, Peter Bernard, E-Color's VP for products and marketing, notes that no more than 10 percent of shoppers that visit 30 client sites, including Bloomingdale's, go through the calibration process. (Like Verifi.net, the company offers the Web application only for desktop computers; to custom-tune a notebook, flat-panel monitor or LCD, users must purchase either E-Color's Colorific or its 3Deep Software on a CD.)

The company launched another application in March that automatically reduces color error on all monitor displays viewing E-Color-enabled sites by 53 percent. That might not be a complete fix, but Bernard says online shoppers with those enhanced-color monitors are 10 percent to 25 percent more likely to turn into online buyers.

For individual companies, however, the connection between more-accurate color and increased sales can be difficult to discern. Rich Atlas, director of marketing and e-commerce for the retailers Venus Swimwear and WinterSilks, which are E-Color customers, says not enough time has passed to observe a real sales trend at his companies' sites. Some observers question whether an increase in online sales can be attributed to a single factor such as enhanced product color. "It's hard to quantify the effect of color because of the dynamic nature of Web sites," says Kevin Noonan, VP of Internet and Media Research at the Yankee Group.

There's also the short-term possibility that shoppers might have too much confidence in a new application that can't always deliver true color. "A lot of technology could be a placebo," says Richard Herbert, president of Pantone, a Carlstadt, N.J., developer of a codified palette of colors that is an industry standard for printers and designers. Herbert questions whether shoppers should trust any digitized color correction application, including Pantone's. "Color correction on the Web is oversold," he says. "There are limitations to digitized color-matching techniques."

That is why the 38-year-old company packaged its palette of 1,757 shades - each of which is assigned a unique number - as a book for consumer use. Pantone is trying to persuade online retailers to include a Pantone color number with the merchandise description so that online shoppers can look it up in the Pantone book (which retails for about $19.95). The end result, of course, would be that everyone involved in the online transaction is literally on the same page.

Herbert believes that digitized color can be used to sell products on the Web, and to that end, his company developed an application that lets Web site users shop by specific Pantone color. (The-shop-by-color application is, at this point, only available to consumers on the home décor site MyMaison.com.) The idea is that a shopper seeking a certain shade of gold napkins to perfectly match a tablecloth might also be tempted to purchase a vase in the same color or a complementary color.

But as with color-correction applications, it's still too soon to tell what effect Pantone's online technology will have on online sales. "It's going to take some time," Herbert says. "But we're in this for the long haul."

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Adjusting the Web Rainbow