In the Independent: Amazon is ten. Imagine if they’d got it wrong…
In The Independent this week, I’ve written about Amazon’s tenth birthday.
While the NYT preferred to concentrate on the money side (which is understandable), I’ve looked at the impact Amazon.com had on web use.
Here’s the things to be thankful for: they had terrific usability right from the start. Imagine if they’d got it wrong. Bezos’s breakthrough (I argue) wasn’t selling books online - anyone could have thought of that. It was having great, streamlined design at a time when “online shopping” was still an oxymoron.
And some sites still haven’t learned the lessons that Amazon laid down even then. To see what I mean, try going to Amazon.co.uk and Interflora.co.uk. Visit both as an *unregistered* user - don’t sign in to either if you’re a member. Try keeping two windows side by side, so you can compare the process.
Now try to buy something. Just click and keep trying to proceed to the checkout. At Interflora, you’ll hit what seems like a roadblock; at precisely the same point, Amazon gives you an easy passage towards spending your money.
(Whether or not you now choose to actually spend your money is up to you, of course, though I can recommend this one - as seen on TV.
Of course Amazon hasn’t paid any dividends, so its price/earnings ratio is literally infinite, though you could calculate how much its EPS is, and make a guess at the PER. Even so, buying the stock is only for those looking to trade it.
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- Done a book review on Amazon? .... oh, so you have (18 November 2005; score: 52.68%)
- The long tail, best gadgets for Xmas, and how a Canadian island may foretell the fate of the Amazon (1 December 2004; score: 50.71%)
- That "independent investigation" into MPs' expenses? It's already going on (21 May 2009; score: 46.49%)
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July 13th, 2005 at 11:48 am
One of things I ran across when reading about the software patents issue and the EU was, (i think)that Amazon have patented their ‘one-click’ sales technology!
trade mark / copyright fine but is this a patentable technology?
i’m happy to be corrected if my facts are wrong, they often are… ;)
Will
July 13th, 2005 at 1:37 pm
Interested to read (in the real paper this morning, and now here) that you think Amazon is a paragon of usability.
They have some things absolutely spot on, it’s true. The payment process is excellent; one-click is a smart idea; and the personalisation can sometimes work really well.
But there’s so much wrong with Amazon. Most people I know navigate it solely through search, because the ‘browse’ (as Amazon insiders call it) is so awkward it might as well not exist.
Stuff moves around on the page for no reason. The search box has several different locations, the Wish List too. Why?
And even the search has big flaws. Why do I always get 3 pages of results for stuff that’s clearly out of print or otherwise no longer available? Can’t Amazon be bothered to clear out their database? That’s the same thing that annoys me about Streetmap.co.uk - ask for a map of (say) Charlbury, where I live, and you’ll be prompted to choose between “Charlbury (city/town/village)”, “Charlbury (town)”, and “Charlbury Station (station)”, just because they’ve imported a couple of hefty databases from somewhere and not bothered to clear out the results.
I really like Joel Spolsky’s take on usability at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/NotJustUsability.html . He points out that the original Napster was unusable by all the usual metrics, but became an instant hit because the product itself was just such a great idea.
Same goes for Streetmap, and for Amazon. A book and CD store where I can find _anything_ I want, click a few buttons, and it arrives on my doorstep next day? Sure, I’ll overlook any number of flaws to get that.
July 13th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
(Oh yes, and Joel Spolsky’s article even contains an incidental reference to another Independent columnist… there you go.)
July 13th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
Yeah, I’ve always thought Amazon gets away with some usability howlers because’s it’s the 800-pound gorilla. But they are bloody good at making me buy stuff. Wish lists! I remember stuff I want to buy, and then buy it. Then they recommend a bunch of stuff to me! Quite well! And I’m a sucker for the reviews they have (not the customer ones) - some ex-NME writers do reviews of albums, quite honestly, as far as I can tell.
But yup, they definitely put a minimum of barriers between your money and themselves.