Making Amazon More Actionable

I’m an Amazon junkie. I’ve bought everything from books to power tools on Amazon. I’m a prime member, meaning I pay $70/year for the ability to get items shipped to me in 2 days or less, every time, rather than paying for express shipping every purchase. Suffice to say, I use the site a lot. But something about the Amazon experience has always bugged me.

This morning, we were talking about how writing for the web is more about imitating “Ernest, not James,” in reference to Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Hemingway is known for his brusque, hard-working sentences. James Joyce creates sentences that span chapters, abusing punctuation and traditional sentence structure.

When I mentioned to Kevin that I’ve never read Joyce’s Ulyssess, bane of English majors everywhere, but reading it was on my personal bucket list, he wisely suggested starting with some of Joyce’s shorter work, specifically the short story collection entitled Dubliners.

Next stop, Amazon. I typed “dubliners james joyce” into the search box on Amazon’s home page, and got to the search results page.

amazon-idea_s01

Only $3.99 for a new copy, with free two-day shipping? Sold! But wait, where’s the “add to cart” button? Oh, it’s on the next page.

But why? I know I want to buy the book (I searched for it by title, after all), and the only thing standing between me and this purchase is the price, which I can see on the results page. I’m ready to buy, and I don’t need or want to read user reviews or see a larger photo. Why not add the purchase/wish list buttons to the results page, and save me some time?

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According to Jared Spool, an incremental usability improvement to Amazon’s user reviews system increased revenues by more than $1 billion. I can only imagine what a more direct, action-oriented enhancement might do for sales.

Mr. Bezos, you can make the check out to “Dave Selden.” Thanks.

Posted on July 31, 2009. Filed under Business, Marketing, , , , .

Dave Selden

By Dave Selden, Creative Director

2 Comments on Making Amazon More Actionable

  1. I agree with the post Dave. Give the user what they want as easily as possible. I would like to see little “buy now” buttons added right underneath the image of the product.

    Posted on Jul 31, 2009.

    By Mark Kellar

  2. Great point Dave. Did you know this blog post came up when I was Googling in a specific question about Amazon–but my question had nothing to do with their check-out page. I did a double take when I saw the name.

    Having just gone through the site to help my son purchase books for his first semester at school (Go Wildcats!), I noticed that the purchase feature was clunky. BTW, you can save a TON of money buying and selling college textbooks on Amazon. Wow, have things changed since I was in school!

    Posted on Aug 25, 2009.

    By Iris Davis