21 ms·
Whilst their website is terrible, I actually think the specifics of what Amazon does makes it very difficult for the website to be good. They sell a million ver
by slivym 8y ago
Whilst their website is terrible, I actually think the specifics of what Amazon does makes it very difficult for the website to be good. They sell a million versions of a million products in a million sectors. What is useful for me to know when buying a hard disk is not the same thing that is useful for me to know when buying a bottle of wine. So they either have 1 size fits all, or a huge cost in building almost custom websites for every different sector.
I'm not sure it's actually possible to do that well.
- Retric 8y agoHaving a 100 or so skins for each major section could go a long way without costing Amazon that much. They already do some customization for example showing different sizes for clothing. The problem is they don't face much direct head to head competition. Where online can you buy a digital movie to watch right now, lawn ornaments, an out of print book from 1970, etc without ordering from several websites.
- village-idiot 8y agoIf it’s possible, Amazon has the resources to do it, they just clearly have decided not to spend them. Fwiw I knew a guy who claimed that the templating language for the main website was written in C headers. I can’t verify that, but if true it’d go a long way to explain why it’s so bad.
- dingaling 8y agoEven fixing the infamous 'Choose a Department to enable sorting' problem would be a start. How am I meant to know Amazon's taxonomy? Somehow eBay can sort products across all categories and present them in one list. Wicked majick!