Thoughts about Amazon.com

I recently attended a talk by noted web usability expert Jared Spool, entitled "Revealing Treasures from the Amazon". Amazon.com is an icon, one of the most highly visited and well-known websites around, and it's often cited as a model for what others want in a website. "Do it like Amazon" is a mantra repeated over and over again by companies building or retooling their website. They seem successful, therefore we should just copy what they do. 

But is it really that simple? Does a company with millions of customers and millions of products compare with any other site? What can we learn from Amazon.com?

Due to its popularity, Jared and others have spent many hours studying Amazon, and learning what it does right, where it has failed, and what others can learn from them. That was the theme of his presentation, and the insights ranged from interesting to amazing (and sometime hilarious).

The link to the full presentation is below, but a few highlights I took away from the talk included:

Are product comments harmful?

• Allowing user comments on products or services is valuable–for Amazon. For most other websites, it is often ineffective or even harmful. Why? It is estimated that only 1 out of every 1300 customers leaves comments. Amazon has the kind of traffic that can make this work. Does your site?
• Customers who leave product comments are not your typical customer. They are more of a fringe group, and a reason that high traffic is needed to produce meaningful commenting.
• Often a customer will only leave comments when something doesn't work. Target.com is a good example of a site with many negative product reviews. Do all their products really stink? Or does even a site as large as Target.com lack the traffic to produce a better sample range of comments?
• For Amazon, comments on products drive sales. They recognized this, and pioneered features such as "this comment is useful" checkboxes, for filtering out comments that were off-topic or unreasonable, and promoting comments that were valuable to the top of the list.

"Tagging" is popular. But it doesn't always work.

• The tagging tool is where users assign keywords to certain products, as an informal way of categorizing things, and another method for customers to browse content. For example, you 'tag' a book like Harry Potter with things like "books" "magic" "fantasy" "children's books", etc. 
• But for a site like Amazon.com, which has millions of titles, do tags really help? Are you going to search for a book on Amazon with the tag "book"? Even more specific tags, such as "sci-fi book" doesn't really narrow it down enough. 
• Tags can be abused, where users tag items as a form of protest or humor. For example, all Microsoft products are being tagged with the term "defective by design"

So easy to buy

• Amazon has a sophisticated security system to protect against fraud. But you wouldn't know it as a customer. Their goal is to eliminate as much "tool time" as possible, meaning logging in, remembering passwords, and so on, and instead have you focus on "goal time," or what to purchase. 
• WIth its 1-click system, customers can purchase items worth thousands of dollars without having to log in. It's a risk Amazon decided was worth the trouble to encourage purchasing. When you deal in high volume of sales, you can afford some risk for the greater reward of increased sales.

Accepting risk. Some success and some failures.

• Ever searching for new ways of improving user experience and sales, Amazon has rolled out many new features over the years. Some has been great successes, such as user comments. Some have never had much success, such as the Gold Box. Interesting to note, these 'failed' experiments never seem to go away. Amazon will keep them on the site despite their success or failures. 

A new way of making money

• Amazon turns over its entire inventory every 20 days or so. It pays its vendors for their products every 45 days. That gap means that Amazon has over 22 days of cash float each month, which allows them to operate indefinitely, and sell products at below cost. 

Funny Stuff

• A quick search for the product, Tuscan Milk, on Amazon will lead to a hilarious series of comments on a 2 gallon jug of milk. Read a few, there's over 1,000 comments, and they're great. . 
• Playmobile Security Checkpoint, for your kid to pretend he/she is scanning travelers.

The Presentation Slides:

http://www.slideshare.net/jmspool/revealing-design-treasures-from-the-am...

• Tips