I spend a lot of time speaking to customers about re-freshing their customer-facing Web experience. A hot topic is rich internet applications (RIA), including things like drag-and-drop check-out, embedded video, rich product imagery, etc. 

An objection I hear quite frequently, especially when discussing Silverlight-based shopping experiences, is that “we don’t think our customers are ready for that experience”.  That is a hugely important consideration.  Persona-based analysis of your customer base will likely indicate there is a mix of customers hungry for a richer shopping experience, and those resistant to any change that could impact their ability to simply browse your digital catalog.  Deep persona development aided by A/B testing is a good way to ferret out preferences like these.

One way to deal with this issue is to allow customers to dip their toe in the water and measure feedback.  Newegg.com has a great example of this with a Silverlight-based buying control they have deployed.  What is great about the experience is that it is optional, but proves out its value on its own. The page allows deep visualization of the products (digital cameras in this case) and a slider to narrow or expand product ranges.

Give it a test drive here:

http://promotions.newegg.com/silverlight/dc/index.html