Showing perfectly how social media and e-commerce can be merged, Chimpogo allows visitors to its site to create a design or illustration for a t-shirt. Shoppers submit their design alongside some information on the story behind it, and other visitors to the site can then blog about it and rate the t-shirt design on a scale of one to five.

Every week, one design is chosen to be produced from the best and most popular submissions. The winning designer gets £500 and the site gets a selection of t-shirts to sell that it already knows are highly rated by its customers.

Other brands have tried similar strategies, letting customers create virtual products and then voting on which are the best, but the immediacy and ongoing nature of this site is engaging and gives customers a reason to keep coming back.

Larger retailers could do worse than have an element of this co-creation on their websites.

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