Online shopping is no longer a simple point, click and purchase affair. A burgeoning crop of startup firms is moving to customize the process with widgets, live-chat and social-networking features.

Blending e-commerce with the community-driven Web 2.0 world can take many forms, and it's not always a perfect fit. Recall last holiday season, when Facebook tried to convert people's Internet errands on other sites into product recommendations sent out in their news feeds, and ended up broadcasting the gifts its users bought their friends and touching off a privacy firestorm.

But that misstep isn't stopping retailers from trying to break into the social Web and reach customers on the sites they like to visit.

"With a steady decline in visits to destination websites over the past 24 months, retailers are looking for ways to reach customers who are no longer coming to them," said Julie Fuchs, director of business development for MediaForge, a company specializing in promotional widgets for retailers to build their brand across the Web.

"Many of these customers are finding similar items on vertical sites and social networking sites," Fuchs told InternetNews.com.

Volusion is one of the companies working to facilitate that convergence. Volusion is a software firm and e-commerce consultancy aiming to help retailers improve and socialize their online presence.

The company recently commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct a study where more than a quarter of online users said that product reviews and comments would encourage them to shop on social networks.

"Online businesses that choose to get involved have much to gain from developing relationships and communicating their messages in the online spaces where potential customers are actively socializing and learning about products they are interested in purchasing," Volusion's Pam Westbrook wrote in a company blog post.

"Relationships have long been a core component of business, and social media provides a contemporary means of developing and fostering them."

But Volusion is only one of many niche firms working to tweak the online shopping experience.

Just in time for the holiday shopping surge, Yoono yesterday launched a shopping widget that generates product recommendations and offers price comparisons. The Firefox sidebar models a user's Web browsing and serves up related product suggestions from popular e-commerce sites. Once users find a deal they like, they can export it to their profile pages on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other social sites.

MediaForge operates in a related space. The company recently launched its distributed commerce platform, aimed at giving retailers a presence on personalized starting-point sites like iGoogle and Facebook.

"Getting users engaged in your brand, wherever they are, can greatly reduce your overall acquisition costs," MediaForge CEO Tony Zito told InternetNews.com. "Leveraging the value of ongoing special offers, coupons and other loyalty features allows you to develop a deeper-rooted relationship with your customer, on a one-to-one basis."

"When customers find real value, they tend to share it," he added.

As a success story, Zito pointed to Southwest Airlines' "Ding" widget, a downloadable desktop feature that alerts users as promotional fares become available. In its first two years, the Ding widget generated more than $150 million in ticket sales, Ad Age reported.

Page 2: Another twist on personalization

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