7 ms·

I ran an ecommerce company for about a year, and one click checkout was the least of our concerns when it came to Amazon. The speed of delivery, prime benefits

by tyrw 9y ago

I ran an ecommerce company for about a year, and one click checkout was the least of our concerns when it came to Amazon. The speed of delivery, prime benefits, brand recognition, and willingness to lose money on many if not most items are absolutely brutal to compete against. I'm glad one click checkout will be more broadly available, but it's probably not going to make much of a difference...

andrepd 9y ago
Absolutely. They have the capital and the scale to outcompete you and anyone that tries to go against them. Bar regulations to protect competition, you have no chance.
- wbl 9y ago
  That's great for consumers.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    Not necessarily. It could easily lead to inferior products as every point on the pipeline from manufacturers to distributors cut costs. It can, in addition, lead to a monopoly situation providing for relatively unconstrained pricing.
- oceanplexian 9y ago
  I've heard this, but I honestly don't see it in practice. If you've been to a Costco recently you may be surprised to find that they're much less expensive than Amazon. They have more buying power and stronger vendor relationships that AMZN simply doesn't have. Prime Day 2017 was also a huge disappointment (Mostly overpriced junk like bluetooth speakers). Honestly I think the only thing that works in Amazon's favor is the convenience, and their private distribution/delivery network. Beyond that they're nothing more than a generic online marketplace.
YCode 9y ago
A lot of people don't realize (or maybe care?) that Amazon makes up a fair amount of that loss from screwing over distributors and third party sellers. The Walmart of the Internet, I suppose. FWIW I usually try to find more direct sources before buying on Amazon. If the other source can drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping I'll buy it direct from them.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Free shipping for what delivery time frame? Amazon Prime's fees are quite small compared to direct shipping costs with carriers. It depends on the product type, of course, but typically third-party sellers are already on thin margins selling on Amazon. It's very likely that "drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping" means they're selling to you at a loss.
  - SubiculumCode 9y ago
    thin profit margins on amazon is not the same as costs of doing business on amazon. Amazon takes a hefty cut.
    - sidlls 9y ago
      Amazon's cut all in (shipping, listing, stocking, etc.) is often on par with the shipping cost for the slowest option with carriers.
      - omarchowdhury 9y ago
        15-20% of price sold at? No way.
  - YCode 9y ago
    I'm not generally in a rush; if they can get it here in a week or two that's fine as long as they tell me what day it'll be here. I'm not saying it's a great deal for the company, but what can you expect consumers to do if Amazon has the cheapest price AND prime shipping you already paid for? That said some companies at least raise their prices on purpose when posting to Amazon in order to meet their standards for things like returns and Prime shipping.
elboru 9y ago
I love paper books, I love seeing them in my shelf, but since I bought a Kindle I just stopped buying paper books. It is just too easy to buy a kindle book with one click. The process goes like this, someone recommends a book in HN, they provide an Amazon link, I read a couple of reviews, at this point I'm convinced about buying the book or not, or even if I'm not totally convinced, the price, and the easiness of just one click makes me do it. That process has increased the amount of books I read per year. Sure the button is only a small part of that, but I think is an esencial part, I think Walmart can get a lot of benefit from this.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Would you buy less books if you had to click a confirmation window? It's much easier to buy books when you don't need to wait for delivery, unpack, carry around, get up to get them, etc. But your process already consist of several clicks and waiting for many pages.
  - jerf 9y ago
    People may self-report "no", but the evidence is abundant that at the margin, the answer is "yes". You are some probably-some-single-digit percentage less likely to buy. That matters very little to you as an individual, it can be life-or-death for a retailer.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >>Would you buy less books if you had to click a confirmation window? Isn't it well-documented that the more steps you have during th purchase process, the lower your conversion rates? I'm sure this is especially true at Amazon's scale. To be specific though, if I'm on my phone and I see a confirmation window, I might postpone the purchase until I'm in front of my computer - and by then I might forget about it. One click purchase completely bypasses these types of scenarios.
- bduerst 9y ago
  I'm kind of the same. I would definitely kill to be able to buy DRM-free epub books from someone else other than Amazon and have it 1-click integrate with my kindle. Maybe some epub sellers could email it to your kindle with 1-click purchasing now?
oceanplexian 9y ago
> The speed of delivery, prime benefits, brand recognition, and willingness to lose money on many if not most items are absolutely brutal to compete against. What I'm hopeful of is that (barring evil patents or monopolies) all of those things should be able to be outsourced a third party vendor or service. Hopefully in the future you will be able to simply contract out alternative delivery service, or drone delivery, or "prime"-like membership programs with the click of a button or an API call.
- tyrw 9y ago
  That is what's happening today, offered by the only company with the scale to do it: Amazon (It's called FBA). Then when they see your products are selling particularly well, they stock them, undercut you, and put you out of business.
  - concede_pluto 9y ago
    Amazon can't undercut manufacturers (not without becoming a manufacturer). If they undercut middlemen who weren't adding any value, what do I care?
    - hobofan 9y ago
      The middlemen are adding value by making niche items available on the marketplace. If they are gone the diversity of products will shrink.
      - robryan 9y ago
        But either Amazon will have the product or it will still be valuable to another middle man. Amazon have a lot but are a long way off having everything. Health and Beauty for example, they may have the top 50k sales ranks pretty well covered but at least the top 100k are probably worth a middle mans time.
        hobofan 9y ago
twothamendment 9y ago
I use amazon for many of the reasons you listed - but the first thing I do on a new device is turn off 1-click. I can't see this patent changing the game for anyone.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- freehunter 9y ago
  On the other hand, many more people actually do use 1-click. A tip: if you ever find yourself saying "why does a company have X feature/product, I don't use it, no one uses it!" you might be right on the first statement but you're almost certainly wrong on the second. It wouldn't be there if no one used it.
  - twothamendment 9y ago
    Of course - if nobody used it Amazon would remove the button. I doubt that adding 1-click to some other site will greatly increase their sales - that is all I'm saying.
    - ipqk 9y ago
      Well, you would be wrong. Every step between a customer and completing an order is a loss of sales.
      - wernercd 9y ago
        If Google can measure how many people they lose by a millisecond of added time between a question and a response ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sites/#4c5f914453cf https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sit... )... Then there has to be some sort of measurement out there on how each step causes cart abandonment (or whatever it's called). Its the same reason sites add Single-Sign-On... click click, I'm on a website... vs filling out forms, verification, etc...
      - 9y ago
erikpukinskis 9y ago
Amazon can't compete on curation, except through third parties which will be a clunky experience.
- nonconvergent 9y ago
  lolwut? Selection + Collaborative Filtering factored against a huge dataset...Amazon's standardizing automatic curation. You just want a native advertisement and Top 10 lists.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
But you have to realize that Amazon was able to become so advanced in all those areas because they had an (arguably) unfair 20-year advantage thanks to this patent. If we could rerun the timeline without this patent, then the e-commerce field would likely not be so lopsided.

by tyrw 9y ago

andrepd 9y ago

Absolutely. They have the capital and the scale to outcompete you and anyone that tries to go against them. Bar regulations to protect competition, you have no chance.

wbl 9y ago
That's great for consumers.
- sidlls 9y ago
  Not necessarily. It could easily lead to inferior products as every point on the pipeline from manufacturers to distributors cut costs. It can, in addition, lead to a monopoly situation providing for relatively unconstrained pricing.
oceanplexian 9y ago
I've heard this, but I honestly don't see it in practice. If you've been to a Costco recently you may be surprised to find that they're much less expensive than Amazon. They have more buying power and stronger vendor relationships that AMZN simply doesn't have. Prime Day 2017 was also a huge disappointment (Mostly overpriced junk like bluetooth speakers). Honestly I think the only thing that works in Amazon's favor is the convenience, and their private distribution/delivery network. Beyond that they're nothing more than a generic online marketplace.

YCode 9y ago

A lot of people don't realize (or maybe care?) that Amazon makes up a fair amount of that loss from screwing over distributors and third party sellers. The Walmart of the Internet, I suppose. FWIW I usually try to find more direct sources before buying on Amazon. If the other source can drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping I'll buy it direct from them.

sidlls 9y ago
Free shipping for what delivery time frame? Amazon Prime's fees are quite small compared to direct shipping costs with carriers. It depends on the product type, of course, but typically third-party sellers are already on thin margins selling on Amazon. It's very likely that "drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping" means they're selling to you at a loss.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  thin profit margins on amazon is not the same as costs of doing business on amazon. Amazon takes a hefty cut.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    Amazon's cut all in (shipping, listing, stocking, etc.) is often on par with the shipping cost for the slowest option with carriers.
    - omarchowdhury 9y ago
      15-20% of price sold at? No way.
- YCode 9y ago
  I'm not generally in a rush; if they can get it here in a week or two that's fine as long as they tell me what day it'll be here. I'm not saying it's a great deal for the company, but what can you expect consumers to do if Amazon has the cheapest price AND prime shipping you already paid for? That said some companies at least raise their prices on purpose when posting to Amazon in order to meet their standards for things like returns and Prime shipping.

elboru 9y ago

I love paper books, I love seeing them in my shelf, but since I bought a Kindle I just stopped buying paper books. It is just too easy to buy a kindle book with one click. The process goes like this, someone recommends a book in HN, they provide an Amazon link, I read a couple of reviews, at this point I'm convinced about buying the book or not, or even if I'm not totally convinced, the price, and the easiness of just one click makes me do it. That process has increased the amount of books I read per year. Sure the button is only a small part of that, but I think is an esencial part, I think Walmart can get a lot of benefit from this.

marcosdumay 9y ago
Would you buy less books if you had to click a confirmation window? It's much easier to buy books when you don't need to wait for delivery, unpack, carry around, get up to get them, etc. But your process already consist of several clicks and waiting for many pages.
- jerf 9y ago
  People may self-report "no", but the evidence is abundant that at the margin, the answer is "yes". You are some probably-some-single-digit percentage less likely to buy. That matters very little to you as an individual, it can be life-or-death for a retailer.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>Would you buy less books if you had to click a confirmation window? Isn't it well-documented that the more steps you have during th purchase process, the lower your conversion rates? I'm sure this is especially true at Amazon's scale. To be specific though, if I'm on my phone and I see a confirmation window, I might postpone the purchase until I'm in front of my computer - and by then I might forget about it. One click purchase completely bypasses these types of scenarios.
bduerst 9y ago
I'm kind of the same. I would definitely kill to be able to buy DRM-free epub books from someone else other than Amazon and have it 1-click integrate with my kindle. Maybe some epub sellers could email it to your kindle with 1-click purchasing now?

oceanplexian 9y ago

> The speed of delivery, prime benefits, brand recognition, and willingness to lose money on many if not most items are absolutely brutal to compete against. What I'm hopeful of is that (barring evil patents or monopolies) all of those things should be able to be outsourced a third party vendor or service. Hopefully in the future you will be able to simply contract out alternative delivery service, or drone delivery, or "prime"-like membership programs with the click of a button or an API call.

tyrw 9y ago
That is what's happening today, offered by the only company with the scale to do it: Amazon (It's called FBA). Then when they see your products are selling particularly well, they stock them, undercut you, and put you out of business.
- concede_pluto 9y ago
  Amazon can't undercut manufacturers (not without becoming a manufacturer). If they undercut middlemen who weren't adding any value, what do I care?
  - hobofan 9y ago
    The middlemen are adding value by making niche items available on the marketplace. If they are gone the diversity of products will shrink.
    - robryan 9y ago
      But either Amazon will have the product or it will still be valuable to another middle man. Amazon have a lot but are a long way off having everything. Health and Beauty for example, they may have the top 50k sales ranks pretty well covered but at least the top 100k are probably worth a middle mans time.
      - hobofan 9y ago

twothamendment 9y ago

I use amazon for many of the reasons you listed - but the first thing I do on a new device is turn off 1-click. I can't see this patent changing the game for anyone.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
freehunter 9y ago
On the other hand, many more people actually do use 1-click. A tip: if you ever find yourself saying "why does a company have X feature/product, I don't use it, no one uses it!" you might be right on the first statement but you're almost certainly wrong on the second. It wouldn't be there if no one used it.
- twothamendment 9y ago
  Of course - if nobody used it Amazon would remove the button. I doubt that adding 1-click to some other site will greatly increase their sales - that is all I'm saying.
  - ipqk 9y ago
    Well, you would be wrong. Every step between a customer and completing an order is a loss of sales.
    - wernercd 9y ago
      If Google can measure how many people they lose by a millisecond of added time between a question and a response ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sites/#4c5f914453cf https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sit... )... Then there has to be some sort of measurement out there on how each step causes cart abandonment (or whatever it's called). Its the same reason sites add Single-Sign-On... click click, I'm on a website... vs filling out forms, verification, etc...
    - 9y ago

erikpukinskis 9y ago

Amazon can't compete on curation, except through third parties which will be a clunky experience.

nonconvergent 9y ago
lolwut? Selection + Collaborative Filtering factored against a huge dataset...Amazon's standardizing automatic curation. You just want a native advertisement and Top 10 lists.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

But you have to realize that Amazon was able to become so advanced in all those areas because they had an (arguably) unfair 20-year advantage thanks to this patent. If we could rerun the timeline without this patent, then the e-commerce field would likely not be so lopsided.