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Does something like this actually cost them a huge amount in sales or do people know enough about the internet today to just come back in a few hours and try ag
by granos 10y ago
Does something like this actually cost them a huge amount in sales or do people know enough about the internet today to just come back in a few hours and try again? I know that personally, if I'm buying from Amazon, I would just come back later and try again.
- Grue3 10y agoConsidering case studies like "300 million dollar button" [1], they are likely losing insane amounts of money. [1] https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/ https://articles.uie.com/three_hund_million_button/
- hullo 10y agoI think it comes down to how you define "a huge amount in sales". Let's optimistically say they lose 1% of sales over a 4 hour period although it could certainly be much higher. Is 1% of Amazon's sales a huge amount for them? Not in the short term. Is that absolute amount a huge amount for me, personally, or most of the other companies in the world? It sure is.
- tlrobinson 10y agoI'd guess they're probably losing more like 90% of sales while search is down. Basically every purchase I make on Amazon starts with a search.
- jontas 10y agoUsually my Amazon purchases start with a Google search that links me directly to the Amazon product page. I rarely use the actual Amazon search.
- mikeash 10y agoIn addition, many search-initiated purchases will be postponed, not abandoned. I'm sure they lose a ton of sales during this period, but I doubt it's as high as 90%.
- stanmancan 10y agoI seem to recall reading an article or post previously about how they don't lose nearly as much as most people expect for this very reason. They would see a dip in sales when it was down, but it was more or less made up with a slight sales spike when it came back up. If I can find the article I'll be sure to share.
- splike 10y agoI have a friend that worked in Amazon for a while. He told me that after outages are repaired, there is a spike in sales but that it is never enough to cover the loses. The revenue does just disappear.
- logicallee 10y agocould be even worse. On the Internet it's not like some corner store you can check later, as it's still just as convenient next time: everything is a Google search away. So everyone who goes through the trouble of figuring out where else they can buy from - might just end up as those other people's customers for good!
- fizzbatter 10y agoI'd be curious to see the numbers on that sort of thing. I know for some people that is the case, but i almost feel.. locked in to Amazon. With free 2 day shipping, and decent customer service if i have problems/etc, i am not likely to shop elsewhere. Is it a strange indicator that this feels more like lockin to me, than loyalty? I have no idea what that means.. or how to change the conceptual impression.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago> Is it a strange indicator that this feels more like lockin to me, than loyalty? My hunch would be that your subconcious is telling you loyalty towards a huge faceless corporation feels weird. If it was a local store with people you could connect your positive experience to, my guess is you'd have no issue calling it loyalty, even if that store was part of an equally big corporation.
- fizzbatter 10y agoThat may be an accurate hunch. I feel loyalty towards Costco, because i hear good things about their employees and know multiple people who want to work there. With that said, it's hard to say if that's because i hear good things, or because it's a physical store with people i see. Compare that to Amazon, and i rarely hear good things about their staff treatment. Despite having a good experience with Amazon. .. to be clear, i just don't hear good things.. not implying that i hear lots of bad.
- ripitrust 10y agoThey might still lose revenues from potential impulsive purchase It just happened to me, I was trying to search a book and want to buy it, but since I can't search, I didn't. And now I don't want to buy it anymore
- eggoa 10y agoThis is why I always put books on the save-for-later list for at least a few days.
- Grishnakh 10y agoThis is why I almost always put everything (bought online) on the save-for-later list for a few days.
- losteric 10y agoThis is a big one, a lot of Amazon is designed around making it really easy to make impulsive purchases. One-click purchases? One-day/same-day delivery? The myriad of suggested/related items on every page between search and checkout? I can see where there'd be a big drop of orders that would never be placed again.
- ripitrust 10y agoI really agree with you
- mrdrozdov 10y agoIf there is no spike of sales, all hours of sales is worth the same, and assuming Amazon makes 100B per year in online sales, then it seems like a considerable loss, but still a drop in the bucket when compared to their total revenue: (1 - (365 * 24 - 4) / (365 * 24)) = 0.000456621... 0.000456621... * 100,000,000,000 = $45,662,100.4566...
- pc86 10y agoI don't think anyone suggested that 4 hours would make up a sizable part of yearly revenue. That's not the point. As another poster mentioned, even with the post-outage spike in sales from folks coming back to get what they wanted an hour ago, they lose those impulse sales forever.
- blastrat 10y agobut if that 100B annual sales includes periodic down-time, and this down-time is within the normal annual amount, then you are double counting down-times...
- Someone1234 10y agoAnd a lot of people will do also. But some won't. They'll either be buying on a whim (and the mood passes), or buy from a competitor. Those are lost sales that aren't coming back. There are people around who never buy on a whim, but there are also a lot of people that buy stuff because the thought crosses their mind, forget about it, then remember when it turns up several days later. These aren't always things you "need" strictly speaking. As to competition I'd name Jet.com, Target, and Walmart as being major ones. I buy a LOT of stuff from Target these days using the Red Card (effectively 5% pays for the tax, and free delivery on all purchases).
- Aelinsaar 10y agoNot only are they losing money, they're giving customers who otherwise never would, motivation to seek out competition they might not come back from.
- dsugarman 10y agothey say they lose 1% of revenue from every extra 100ms of page load time, how much do you think they would lose from 4 hours of downtime?
- sillysaurus3 10y agoRule of thumb: differences of orders of magnitude result in differences of kind, not degree. Behavior over 100ms can't be compared to behavior over hours. It's possible that it's true, but it's unlikely.
- trjordan 10y agoSort of. If the brand is good (e.g. Amazon), people will come back later to buy. On the other hand, you can model some buying as periodic, not need-based. I go to the grocery store when I need food, but I go to J Crew once every six months. If I'm traveling this June, I'll delay my trip until July, so while the revenue isn't "lost", it's pushed into the future. My next trip is then in January, not December, and at this point, J Crew has lost one month of my sales forever. There's a similar effect for many items at Amazon. I only spend so much time shopping, so if I can't do it now, there's some opportunity they miss out on in the future. The aggregate ends up looking like revenue that's lost forever.
- ww520 10y agoI was doing some late night search for a purchase in Amazon and saw the problem. Tried couple times and gave up. Now I lost the mood to continue. Yeah, it does cost loss of sales.