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People don't mind buying from a vendor's site directly but the vendor should do their best to reduce the admin / pain of doing so. Some tips I wish vendors wou

People don't mind buying from a vendor's site directly but the vendor should do their best to reduce the admin / pain of doing so. Some tips I wish vendors would follow: 1. Don't capture more information than is absolutely necessary for the transaction. 2. Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something. 3. Don't automatically add the user to your newsletter and send their details to your ad network. Be very explicit that you won't do this. 4. Tell the user up front how much postage will most likely cost and expected delivery time before you capture all their details. You can guess their general location from their IP address of have them select a city. 5. Have multiple payment options (like paypal for example), not just credit card. 6. Up front, tell them what you need from them before they can complete the transaction. Nobody likes working through an endless data collection wizard only to stop half way though because you don't want to give up that data or get bored filling things in. It's really not that complicated.

mikece 7y ago
That would be ideal but every piece of data they capture is a component for a future sales funnel. The smart way to do this would be to have some boilerplate language about respecting user's privacy and having a minimum number of required fields and then baiting you to provide more info for discounts, insider info, and whatever else they are willing to give as digital tchotchkes in exchange for more and more marketing data.
- throwaway35784 7y ago
  Your suggestions are what give that icky feeling. It's creepy. People don't like creepy. You are losing costumers.
  - izzydata 7y ago
    Is your spelling of "customers" as "costumers" intentional? It feels like some inside joke I am missing.
    - throwaway35784 7y ago
      It was a swypo I thought was funny so I left it because it fit. The joke was only in my head, but I really love when the autocorrections pick something insightful.
- lotyrin 7y ago
  I buy the number of shoes per year that I'm going to buy and I'm going to buy them first based on a value calculation that considers things like their price and my expectation of their longevity and secondly based on whether or not I'm contributing to business practices that externalize costs of my purchase to others. I will forever opt out and unsubscribe from anything I can, and furiously report spam for the remainder. Who are these people that, having bought some sneakers already, get a email about other sneakers into their nearly bottomless inbox full of junk (presumedly, given they don't avoid these kinds of marketing messages) will actually notice it amongst the noise and then actually be compelled to buy additional shoes they wouldn't have otherwise (and therefore apparently didn't need)? Certainly they exist in some number, because they show up in optimization dashboards I've built for my clients, but what portion of the market are they, truly? Is this reflective of a psychological disorder (perhaps the underlying cause of "hoarding" is a spectrum-type pathology)? Is optimizing for these customers's odd (and apparently self destructive) behavior the same thing as optimizing revenue in the total market or is it just a local optima that everyone's in a big hurry to to corner themselves in? Even if it was a true global optimum, is it ethical? Is this the microtransaction whale-hunt optimization race to the bottom that mobile games went through (and results in many such as myself avoiding participation in that market) in slow motion due to physical goods' slower cycles?
  - undersuit 7y ago
    >Who are these people that, having bought some sneakers already, get a email about other sneakers into their nearly bottomless inbox full of junk (presumedly, given they don't avoid these kinds of marketing messages) will actually notice it amongst the noise and then actually be compelled to buy additional shoes they wouldn't have otherwise They exist, I just think it's stupid to build your business around them. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/sothebys-sells-sneaker-collection-for-850k-nike-pair-may-fetch-160k.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/sothebys-sells-sneaker-colle... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSGN0Er18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSGN0Er18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9_tB1tzT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9_tB1tzT4 https://www.sacbee.com/sports/nba/sacramento-kings/article237288604.html https://www.sacbee.com/sports/nba/sacramento-kings/article23...
  - 7y ago
- jeltz 7y ago
  How is making it seem like the data is mandatory any better than it actually being mandatory? I will probably bounce as a customer either way before actually in detail investigating the huge form I was presented and buy from an online competitor or from a physical store. And maybe I am an odd customer, but I also think that the customer who buys more sneakers just due to a spammy newsletter is too. Edit: Online casinos here in Sweden recently went through a revolution where they added e-ID login (meaning that users do not need to complete a huge form on signup) and automatic withdrawal on logging out when possible. Sure, they were lucky that they could get almost all of the old data they gathered by using the e-ID, but even if they had not been able to I think it still would have been worth it to collect less data to get more sales. And apparently slowing down withdrawals was bad for business (who could have known!) despite making some gamblers lose their money while waiting for the withdrawal to be approved. Customer hostile greedy strategies can trap you in a local optima.
bambax 7y ago
4: Whenever possible (which is, in most cases except for huge and/or super cheap items), incorporate shipping costs into the cost of the product. Then you can say: "Free shipping!"
- jszymborski 7y ago
  I think the primary barrier here is that, while you can assume based on IP/Locale, you don't entirely know where the customer intends on shipping the product, and therefore rates fluctuate. It would be great to allow customers to estimate shipping as soon as possible, rather than just before clicking the "give us money" button.
  - jolmg 7y ago
    Also, you want to present the same price to all customers.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
      Yeah, I don't know why you'd do what they're prescribing. It's just misleading and seems more like a dark pattern. As if "free shipping" will manipulate them to make the purchase. People already understand the price of an object vs the cost of sending that object somewhere in the world. Everyone understands $100 shoes with a shipping fee, not $105-$130 shoes that shape-shift depending on where the person lives that opens the link.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
        But seeing $100 shoes then seeing $5 shipping fees tacked on separately will make people feel cheated, and abandon the purchase. They made a decision to spend $100, and now you're trying to make them make another decision to spend $105 instead. Disclosing the shipping fees up front helps a bit, but not completely.
        hombre_fatal 7y ago
tantalor 7y ago
This is like how "Buy on Google" works. https://support.google.com/googleshopping/answer/9115668?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleshopping/answer/9115668?hl=... You don't need to even visit the vendor site, you can just purchase from any vendor with your stored purchase credentials.
rimunroe 7y ago
I used Apple Pay on iOS to buy something direct from a vendor recently and was shocked at how smooth the purchase experience was. 1. Click "Buy with Apple Pay" button. 2. Double click power button on the side of my phone to confirm. I wish more sites would support it.
- bklyn11201 7y ago
  It works with Safari on Desktop also, and yes, it's glorious and easy. Other tips to get me to avoid Amazon: tell me your site supports Apple Pay and help me move my full cart (e.g., a cart link with a temporary token) from Chrome to Safari so I can use Apple Pay.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  I wish there was a Firefox plugin that'd alert you that a site is checking for Apple Pay support and tell you, so I could switch into Safari briefly to do the purchase.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    That would be amazing. I just switched back to Firefox from Safari after uBlock stopped working and the biggest thing I miss is Apple Pay. I try to remember to make purchases in Safari but, without the ability to use an ad blocker, it makes it much less simple and seamless than it was before.
- cascom 7y ago
  I was pretty amazed as well - frankly I'd much prefer buying direct with apple pay than through amazon
- tingletech 7y ago
  I tried to buy my Mom a birthday gift with such an apple pay checkout from a manufacture's site, and I have been unable to set the shipping address to her's vs mine. It was a bit cheaper than Amazon, but it is coming to my house today and not my Mom's (happy birthday mom!). Now she has to wait till thanksgiving.
anbotero 7y ago
You know who has to suffer from this? International buyers. I buy a lot from Amazon, and I live in Colombia. While these days there are a lot of direct, global shipments from Amazon, I still buy a lot of things I leave at my aunt's house in Miami by the time I travel to pick it all up. I remember not being able to buy a custom Converse shoe on their vendor site because I didn't have a local US credit card. I hate it, I hate not having options. Even Newegg accepts international credit cards these days. The amount of regression on these platforms is disgusting, and then they ask why others become powerhouses and they don't...
- jeltz 7y ago
  Even in Europe we suffer from this. I never buy from Amazon anymore due to their website being as bad as the average small webbshop if you are not in one of the countries Amazon is in (e.g. US, UK or Germany).
  - the_duke 7y ago
    This has gotten better for me. Starting a few months ago, I now clearly see a indication if the item would ship to my country. (also in Europe)
  - brnt 7y ago
    Small shops had superior experiences to Amazon even back in the 90ies. Never understood the appeal of Amazon. There's so much better options locally (NL), in matters of search, payment, website ease of use, shipping, etc. I hope for the rest of Europe and perhaps America bol.com expands ;)
    - ojilles 7y ago
      I wouldn’t necessarily hold bol.com up as the NL example (so many incorrect shipments, thing that take 2 weeks to deliver while labeled as “in stock”, etc). I’d go with Coolblue as the go to example.
    - romwell 7y ago
      In the US, Amazon trumps pretty much everything else with free 2-day delivery (and often, 1-day and even same-day) with Amazon Prime, and a relatively painless and easy return process and handling cases of mis-shipment. Also, as one of the most popular stores, it has the most reviews on items like electronics. These reviews provide a lot of value (not the star-ratings, but actual reviews, where you can see what people complain about). For things like photography equipment and musical instruments, I'd go to other stores (BHphoto/Adorama/GuitarCenter/Sweetwater/Reverb/Ebay).
dehrmann 7y ago
I'm slightly surprised there isn't room for a logistics company that can give smaller retailers Amazon-level efficiencies, but not have ecommerce ambitions, itself. And it should be branded (like Amazon Prime), not just someone in the backround, so people know it will ship quickly, arrive quickly, and have a good level of support.
- patwolfe 7y ago
  Isn't this Shopify [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Sort of, but Shopify (at least last I checked) is only the storefront and credit card processing. Warehousing, inventory management, fulfillment, and shipping are all 100% still on the vendor. EDIT: Looks like Shopify is indeed setting up its own fulfillment network, but it was only announced a few months ago and is likely some ways off from launching: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/shopify-setting-up-fulfillment-network-in-u-s-just-like-amazon https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/shopify-s...
- awa 7y ago
  Shoprunner tried to be somewhere in that niche, but it kind of has died down after the initial hype, I still see a few sites using it but the big retailers seems to be gone from the program.
gfo 7y ago
It surprises me the large shipping companies (UPS, Fedex) haven't pushed fulfillment to the level Amazon has. Frankly, I would be shopping directly through retailers more if I could get everything for free two-day shipping. I get part of that is funded through the Prime annual fee and Amazon's cut of the proceeds but given their large distribution networks I would think they could come to Amazon's level (but this also probably depends on the volume of other packages they handle which AREN'T retail).
- justinclift 7y ago
  Something like a "UPS Prime" or "Fedex Prime" even?
- shantly 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure Amazon offsets a fair bit of their "free Prime shipping" costs by raising prices, perhaps selectively. UPS and Fedex can't really do that since they're not also setting the price of goods sold.
- sct202 7y ago
  A lot of companies have 3 parties do all the fulfillment (warehouse/packaging) for them and then the carriers are always FedEx, UPS, USPS. I've pushed almost all my online shopping off of Amazon (except for Kindle books) and haven't really notice a drop in service or speed, except that the same day delivery isn't an option.
bliblah 7y ago
The issue is that Amazon and other 3rd party vendors actually offer deals. I was in the market for some headphones and had a specific brand and make in mind and when I looked in their site they were more than $100 more than Amazon. This has held true for me for a lot of items and even when using price tracker it is pretty much no contest to just buy off any reputable vendor most of the time. I think it's just that the people who make the goods often have no market sense and rely on outsourcing it for 90% of their sales.
- yodon 7y ago
  If a manufacturer undercuts all their distributors, they stop having distributors.
  - eberkund 7y ago
    If Amazon undercuts all a manufacturer's (other) distributors, they also stop having distributors. Maybe that's why Nike is going in this direction.
- LargeWu 7y ago
  The way Amazon works, it's very possible that the version you found on Amazon for significantly less was counterfeit, being sold by an unknown third-party.
- W-Stool 7y ago
  What are the chances that the deal you found on Amazon involved counterfeit goods? That’s been a big problem with audio and electronics on Amazon recently.
  - eropple 7y ago
    People say it's a big problem but to date, having bought in the low five digits of audio and video hardware mostly from Amazon, I've had zero (obvious) counterfeits and very little defective gear generally, all of which was manufacturer sourced. I'm sure that counterfeiting is a real problem, but I don't know how pervasive it actually is.
jcsnv 7y ago
I'd add make sure your site loads quickly. I tried buying something yesterday from an online vendor, but it took 10s+(!) just to load a product page. I eventually gave up after 2 minutes of frustration and bought from a competitor whose site loaded quickly.
aledalgrande 7y ago
And security. Please have someone who understands security if you are not on something like Shopify.
gigatexal 7y ago
I am 100% more likely to buy from your online store if you have a simple checkout process that lets me use Apple Pay. And if you want an email to send the confirmation to use Sign In with Apple and I will default to buying from you over another provider. It’s as simple as that: I get far less spam, I know my privacy is being secured, and I get to support a company that supports the easiest checkout process ever.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  I would pay more to a website that offers Apple Pay just for the convenience.
  - fireattack 7y ago
    People don't seem to like the additional "convenience fee" when they're paying their bill online, though :P (which to be fair, is indeed more convenient than paying it in-person.)
    - techsupporter 7y ago
      I don't like the "convenience fee" for two reasons: 1) I object to being charged to give someone money. If you tell me I owe you $90 and that you accept this list of methods to pay and I go to use one of those methods and you reply "oh to use that method I will charge you an extra $3.95," I am going to use the method that costs me an extra $0 because I already agreed to give you $90; you can work out how to collect that $90 in a way that only costs me the $90 I owe you. 2) It is an outdated fee. When it first started, electronic payments were new, novel, and cost actual money to put into a workflow. Now, physically handling checks and cash often have more cost to the merchant than paying electronically because the cost and logistics of electronic payments have been so streamlined. This fee has turned into a cash grab. (That first point is why I still use paper checks. My apartment complex charges almost $50 to pay rent with a credit card and $10 to use a debit card. But walking the check three minutes from my front door to the night drop the day I get paid is entirely free since my credit union gives me a box of checks every year and I go through far fewer than one box per year. If my apartment complex finds that taking paper checks costs them money but electronic payments don't, they can adjust their pricing to reflect that.)
lostgame 7y ago
>> 1. Don't capture more information than is absolutely necessary for the transaction. >> 2. Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something. >> 3. Don't automatically add the user to your newsletter and send their details to your ad network. Be very explicit that you won't do this. >> 4. Tell the user up front how much postage will most likely cost and expected delivery time before you capture all their details. You can guess their general location from their IP address of have them select a city. Yeah, alright, because marketing and the higher-ups will be totally a-ok with all of those missed opportunities...not? >> Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something Especially isn't going to happen. The marketing team is honestly stupid if they don't do this. If a customer has purchased something, companies do everything they can to encourage a repeat purchase. Part of that is offering newsletters on updates for new products or sales.
- ryguytilidie 7y ago
  >Yeah, alright, because marketing and the higher-ups will be totally a-ok with all of those missed opportunities...not? I've definitely just aborted out of a purchase flow for pretty much all of these things. You're supposed to be making profits, not happiness for your marketing team.
  - compiler-guy 7y ago
    > You're supposed to be making profits, not happiness for your marketing team. These two things have a strong positive correlation. Marketing teams don't become happy just because you get a newsletter. They become happy because you engage with the brand and the brand makes more sales. Which in turn makes for more profits.
    - inferiorhuman 7y ago
      These two things have a strong positive correlation. Marketing teams don't become happy just because you get a newsletter. They become happy because you engage with the brand and the brand makes more sales. Which in turn makes for more profits. Making people jump through hoops to stop the barrage of spam certainly means your users will be engaged. But it also means they'll be unhappy. Which in turn makes for fewer profits.
autoexec 7y ago
For my own sake I'd add to that list that they should make disclose every 3rd party site they'll need to load scripts from or at the very least include those early in the process. I'm not allowing JavaScript to run from anywhere if it isn't 100% necessary for exactly what I want to accomplish. Filling out a form only to have it fail because suddenly the website wants to run code from another domain is annoying, and each allow/refresh is an opportunity for badly designed websites to screw up my order or charge me multiple times. I do realize that most customers aren't selectively allowing/rejecting scripts, but its been a highly recommended practice for decades now.
mav3rick 7y ago
Have you used Nike+ ? It's 2-4 day shipping, 30 day returns with wear and tear. It's fantastic.
jgalt212 7y ago
5 takes care of 1.
vector_spaces 7y ago
I agree with each item but I'm not optimistic. Even brick and mortar stores are demanding phone numbers and emails to complete in-store transactions now. I used to fight a war of wills refusing to provide either until Home Depot associatesstraight up said they wouldn't finish the transaction and no one had authorization to bypass the email field when I tried to buy a freezer there. I since set up an email alias with fastmail to deal with this crap. I recently had a similar thing go down at DSW -- they sent my junk account via my alias 4 emails in the space of two days.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  why even give them a real email address?
alialghamdi 7y ago
Where I live, Cash/CreditCard on Delivery is very common, which helps a lot for buyers who aren't sure about the service. Yet, it clearly adds a burden on the seller. I'd like to add to your points, especially for brick and mortar stores going online, make sure the shopping experience is good! Few of the stores we have 10x harder experiences in shopping and browsing.

mikece 7y ago

That would be ideal but every piece of data they capture is a component for a future sales funnel. The smart way to do this would be to have some boilerplate language about respecting user's privacy and having a minimum number of required fields and then baiting you to provide more info for discounts, insider info, and whatever else they are willing to give as digital tchotchkes in exchange for more and more marketing data.

throwaway35784 7y ago
Your suggestions are what give that icky feeling. It's creepy. People don't like creepy. You are losing costumers.
- izzydata 7y ago
  Is your spelling of "customers" as "costumers" intentional? It feels like some inside joke I am missing.
  - throwaway35784 7y ago
    It was a swypo I thought was funny so I left it because it fit. The joke was only in my head, but I really love when the autocorrections pick something insightful.
lotyrin 7y ago
I buy the number of shoes per year that I'm going to buy and I'm going to buy them first based on a value calculation that considers things like their price and my expectation of their longevity and secondly based on whether or not I'm contributing to business practices that externalize costs of my purchase to others. I will forever opt out and unsubscribe from anything I can, and furiously report spam for the remainder. Who are these people that, having bought some sneakers already, get a email about other sneakers into their nearly bottomless inbox full of junk (presumedly, given they don't avoid these kinds of marketing messages) will actually notice it amongst the noise and then actually be compelled to buy additional shoes they wouldn't have otherwise (and therefore apparently didn't need)? Certainly they exist in some number, because they show up in optimization dashboards I've built for my clients, but what portion of the market are they, truly? Is this reflective of a psychological disorder (perhaps the underlying cause of "hoarding" is a spectrum-type pathology)? Is optimizing for these customers's odd (and apparently self destructive) behavior the same thing as optimizing revenue in the total market or is it just a local optima that everyone's in a big hurry to to corner themselves in? Even if it was a true global optimum, is it ethical? Is this the microtransaction whale-hunt optimization race to the bottom that mobile games went through (and results in many such as myself avoiding participation in that market) in slow motion due to physical goods' slower cycles?
- undersuit 7y ago
  >Who are these people that, having bought some sneakers already, get a email about other sneakers into their nearly bottomless inbox full of junk (presumedly, given they don't avoid these kinds of marketing messages) will actually notice it amongst the noise and then actually be compelled to buy additional shoes they wouldn't have otherwise They exist, I just think it's stupid to build your business around them. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/sothebys-sells-sneaker-collection-for-850k-nike-pair-may-fetch-160k.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/17/sothebys-sells-sneaker-colle... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSGN0Er18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWSGN0Er18E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9_tB1tzT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9_tB1tzT4 https://www.sacbee.com/sports/nba/sacramento-kings/article237288604.html https://www.sacbee.com/sports/nba/sacramento-kings/article23...
- 7y ago
jeltz 7y ago
How is making it seem like the data is mandatory any better than it actually being mandatory? I will probably bounce as a customer either way before actually in detail investigating the huge form I was presented and buy from an online competitor or from a physical store. And maybe I am an odd customer, but I also think that the customer who buys more sneakers just due to a spammy newsletter is too. Edit: Online casinos here in Sweden recently went through a revolution where they added e-ID login (meaning that users do not need to complete a huge form on signup) and automatic withdrawal on logging out when possible. Sure, they were lucky that they could get almost all of the old data they gathered by using the e-ID, but even if they had not been able to I think it still would have been worth it to collect less data to get more sales. And apparently slowing down withdrawals was bad for business (who could have known!) despite making some gamblers lose their money while waiting for the withdrawal to be approved. Customer hostile greedy strategies can trap you in a local optima.

bambax 7y ago

4: Whenever possible (which is, in most cases except for huge and/or super cheap items), incorporate shipping costs into the cost of the product. Then you can say: "Free shipping!"

jszymborski 7y ago
I think the primary barrier here is that, while you can assume based on IP/Locale, you don't entirely know where the customer intends on shipping the product, and therefore rates fluctuate. It would be great to allow customers to estimate shipping as soon as possible, rather than just before clicking the "give us money" button.
- jolmg 7y ago
  Also, you want to present the same price to all customers.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Yeah, I don't know why you'd do what they're prescribing. It's just misleading and seems more like a dark pattern. As if "free shipping" will manipulate them to make the purchase. People already understand the price of an object vs the cost of sending that object somewhere in the world. Everyone understands $100 shoes with a shipping fee, not $105-$130 shoes that shape-shift depending on where the person lives that opens the link.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
      But seeing $100 shoes then seeing $5 shipping fees tacked on separately will make people feel cheated, and abandon the purchase. They made a decision to spend $100, and now you're trying to make them make another decision to spend $105 instead. Disclosing the shipping fees up front helps a bit, but not completely.
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago

tantalor 7y ago

This is like how "Buy on Google" works. https://support.google.com/googleshopping/answer/9115668?hl=en https://support.google.com/googleshopping/answer/9115668?hl=... You don't need to even visit the vendor site, you can just purchase from any vendor with your stored purchase credentials.

rimunroe 7y ago

I used Apple Pay on iOS to buy something direct from a vendor recently and was shocked at how smooth the purchase experience was. 1. Click "Buy with Apple Pay" button. 2. Double click power button on the side of my phone to confirm. I wish more sites would support it.

bklyn11201 7y ago
It works with Safari on Desktop also, and yes, it's glorious and easy. Other tips to get me to avoid Amazon: tell me your site supports Apple Pay and help me move my full cart (e.g., a cart link with a temporary token) from Chrome to Safari so I can use Apple Pay.
ceejayoz 7y ago
I wish there was a Firefox plugin that'd alert you that a site is checking for Apple Pay support and tell you, so I could switch into Safari briefly to do the purchase.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  That would be amazing. I just switched back to Firefox from Safari after uBlock stopped working and the biggest thing I miss is Apple Pay. I try to remember to make purchases in Safari but, without the ability to use an ad blocker, it makes it much less simple and seamless than it was before.
cascom 7y ago
I was pretty amazed as well - frankly I'd much prefer buying direct with apple pay than through amazon
tingletech 7y ago
I tried to buy my Mom a birthday gift with such an apple pay checkout from a manufacture's site, and I have been unable to set the shipping address to her's vs mine. It was a bit cheaper than Amazon, but it is coming to my house today and not my Mom's (happy birthday mom!). Now she has to wait till thanksgiving.

anbotero 7y ago

You know who has to suffer from this? International buyers. I buy a lot from Amazon, and I live in Colombia. While these days there are a lot of direct, global shipments from Amazon, I still buy a lot of things I leave at my aunt's house in Miami by the time I travel to pick it all up. I remember not being able to buy a custom Converse shoe on their vendor site because I didn't have a local US credit card. I hate it, I hate not having options. Even Newegg accepts international credit cards these days. The amount of regression on these platforms is disgusting, and then they ask why others become powerhouses and they don't...

jeltz 7y ago
Even in Europe we suffer from this. I never buy from Amazon anymore due to their website being as bad as the average small webbshop if you are not in one of the countries Amazon is in (e.g. US, UK or Germany).
- the_duke 7y ago
  This has gotten better for me. Starting a few months ago, I now clearly see a indication if the item would ship to my country. (also in Europe)
- brnt 7y ago
  Small shops had superior experiences to Amazon even back in the 90ies. Never understood the appeal of Amazon. There's so much better options locally (NL), in matters of search, payment, website ease of use, shipping, etc. I hope for the rest of Europe and perhaps America bol.com expands ;)
  - ojilles 7y ago
    I wouldn’t necessarily hold bol.com up as the NL example (so many incorrect shipments, thing that take 2 weeks to deliver while labeled as “in stock”, etc). I’d go with Coolblue as the go to example.
  - romwell 7y ago
    In the US, Amazon trumps pretty much everything else with free 2-day delivery (and often, 1-day and even same-day) with Amazon Prime, and a relatively painless and easy return process and handling cases of mis-shipment. Also, as one of the most popular stores, it has the most reviews on items like electronics. These reviews provide a lot of value (not the star-ratings, but actual reviews, where you can see what people complain about). For things like photography equipment and musical instruments, I'd go to other stores (BHphoto/Adorama/GuitarCenter/Sweetwater/Reverb/Ebay).

dehrmann 7y ago

I'm slightly surprised there isn't room for a logistics company that can give smaller retailers Amazon-level efficiencies, but not have ecommerce ambitions, itself. And it should be branded (like Amazon Prime), not just someone in the backround, so people know it will ship quickly, arrive quickly, and have a good level of support.

patwolfe 7y ago
Isn't this Shopify [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopify
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  Sort of, but Shopify (at least last I checked) is only the storefront and credit card processing. Warehousing, inventory management, fulfillment, and shipping are all 100% still on the vendor. EDIT: Looks like Shopify is indeed setting up its own fulfillment network, but it was only announced a few months ago and is likely some ways off from launching: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/shopify-setting-up-fulfillment-network-in-u-s-just-like-amazon https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-19/shopify-s...
awa 7y ago
Shoprunner tried to be somewhere in that niche, but it kind of has died down after the initial hype, I still see a few sites using it but the big retailers seems to be gone from the program.

gfo 7y ago

It surprises me the large shipping companies (UPS, Fedex) haven't pushed fulfillment to the level Amazon has. Frankly, I would be shopping directly through retailers more if I could get everything for free two-day shipping. I get part of that is funded through the Prime annual fee and Amazon's cut of the proceeds but given their large distribution networks I would think they could come to Amazon's level (but this also probably depends on the volume of other packages they handle which AREN'T retail).

justinclift 7y ago
Something like a "UPS Prime" or "Fedex Prime" even?
shantly 7y ago
I'm pretty sure Amazon offsets a fair bit of their "free Prime shipping" costs by raising prices, perhaps selectively. UPS and Fedex can't really do that since they're not also setting the price of goods sold.
sct202 7y ago
A lot of companies have 3 parties do all the fulfillment (warehouse/packaging) for them and then the carriers are always FedEx, UPS, USPS. I've pushed almost all my online shopping off of Amazon (except for Kindle books) and haven't really notice a drop in service or speed, except that the same day delivery isn't an option.

bliblah 7y ago

The issue is that Amazon and other 3rd party vendors actually offer deals. I was in the market for some headphones and had a specific brand and make in mind and when I looked in their site they were more than $100 more than Amazon. This has held true for me for a lot of items and even when using price tracker it is pretty much no contest to just buy off any reputable vendor most of the time. I think it's just that the people who make the goods often have no market sense and rely on outsourcing it for 90% of their sales.

yodon 7y ago
If a manufacturer undercuts all their distributors, they stop having distributors.
- eberkund 7y ago
  If Amazon undercuts all a manufacturer's (other) distributors, they also stop having distributors. Maybe that's why Nike is going in this direction.
LargeWu 7y ago
The way Amazon works, it's very possible that the version you found on Amazon for significantly less was counterfeit, being sold by an unknown third-party.
W-Stool 7y ago
What are the chances that the deal you found on Amazon involved counterfeit goods? That’s been a big problem with audio and electronics on Amazon recently.
- eropple 7y ago
  People say it's a big problem but to date, having bought in the low five digits of audio and video hardware mostly from Amazon, I've had zero (obvious) counterfeits and very little defective gear generally, all of which was manufacturer sourced. I'm sure that counterfeiting is a real problem, but I don't know how pervasive it actually is.

jcsnv 7y ago

I'd add make sure your site loads quickly. I tried buying something yesterday from an online vendor, but it took 10s+(!) just to load a product page. I eventually gave up after 2 minutes of frustration and bought from a competitor whose site loaded quickly.

aledalgrande 7y ago

And security. Please have someone who understands security if you are not on something like Shopify.

gigatexal 7y ago

I am 100% more likely to buy from your online store if you have a simple checkout process that lets me use Apple Pay. And if you want an email to send the confirmation to use Sign In with Apple and I will default to buying from you over another provider. It’s as simple as that: I get far less spam, I know my privacy is being secured, and I get to support a company that supports the easiest checkout process ever.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
I would pay more to a website that offers Apple Pay just for the convenience.
- fireattack 7y ago
  People don't seem to like the additional "convenience fee" when they're paying their bill online, though :P (which to be fair, is indeed more convenient than paying it in-person.)
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    I don't like the "convenience fee" for two reasons: 1) I object to being charged to give someone money. If you tell me I owe you $90 and that you accept this list of methods to pay and I go to use one of those methods and you reply "oh to use that method I will charge you an extra $3.95," I am going to use the method that costs me an extra $0 because I already agreed to give you $90; you can work out how to collect that $90 in a way that only costs me the $90 I owe you. 2) It is an outdated fee. When it first started, electronic payments were new, novel, and cost actual money to put into a workflow. Now, physically handling checks and cash often have more cost to the merchant than paying electronically because the cost and logistics of electronic payments have been so streamlined. This fee has turned into a cash grab. (That first point is why I still use paper checks. My apartment complex charges almost $50 to pay rent with a credit card and $10 to use a debit card. But walking the check three minutes from my front door to the night drop the day I get paid is entirely free since my credit union gives me a box of checks every year and I go through far fewer than one box per year. If my apartment complex finds that taking paper checks costs them money but electronic payments don't, they can adjust their pricing to reflect that.)

lostgame 7y ago

>> 1. Don't capture more information than is absolutely necessary for the transaction. >> 2. Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something. >> 3. Don't automatically add the user to your newsletter and send their details to your ad network. Be very explicit that you won't do this. >> 4. Tell the user up front how much postage will most likely cost and expected delivery time before you capture all their details. You can guess their general location from their IP address of have them select a city. Yeah, alright, because marketing and the higher-ups will be totally a-ok with all of those missed opportunities...not? >> Don't force the user to sign up or join anything if they just want to buy something Especially isn't going to happen. The marketing team is honestly stupid if they don't do this. If a customer has purchased something, companies do everything they can to encourage a repeat purchase. Part of that is offering newsletters on updates for new products or sales.

ryguytilidie 7y ago
>Yeah, alright, because marketing and the higher-ups will be totally a-ok with all of those missed opportunities...not? I've definitely just aborted out of a purchase flow for pretty much all of these things. You're supposed to be making profits, not happiness for your marketing team.
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  > You're supposed to be making profits, not happiness for your marketing team. These two things have a strong positive correlation. Marketing teams don't become happy just because you get a newsletter. They become happy because you engage with the brand and the brand makes more sales. Which in turn makes for more profits.
  - inferiorhuman 7y ago
    These two things have a strong positive correlation. Marketing teams don't become happy just because you get a newsletter. They become happy because you engage with the brand and the brand makes more sales. Which in turn makes for more profits. Making people jump through hoops to stop the barrage of spam certainly means your users will be engaged. But it also means they'll be unhappy. Which in turn makes for fewer profits.

autoexec 7y ago

For my own sake I'd add to that list that they should make disclose every 3rd party site they'll need to load scripts from or at the very least include those early in the process. I'm not allowing JavaScript to run from anywhere if it isn't 100% necessary for exactly what I want to accomplish. Filling out a form only to have it fail because suddenly the website wants to run code from another domain is annoying, and each allow/refresh is an opportunity for badly designed websites to screw up my order or charge me multiple times. I do realize that most customers aren't selectively allowing/rejecting scripts, but its been a highly recommended practice for decades now.

mav3rick 7y ago

Have you used Nike+ ? It's 2-4 day shipping, 30 day returns with wear and tear. It's fantastic.

jgalt212 7y ago

5 takes care of 1.

vector_spaces 7y ago

I agree with each item but I'm not optimistic. Even brick and mortar stores are demanding phone numbers and emails to complete in-store transactions now. I used to fight a war of wills refusing to provide either until Home Depot associatesstraight up said they wouldn't finish the transaction and no one had authorization to bypass the email field when I tried to buy a freezer there. I since set up an email alias with fastmail to deal with this crap. I recently had a similar thing go down at DSW -- they sent my junk account via my alias 4 emails in the space of two days.

grogenaut 7y ago
why even give them a real email address?

alialghamdi 7y ago

Where I live, Cash/CreditCard on Delivery is very common, which helps a lot for buyers who aren't sure about the service. Yet, it clearly adds a burden on the seller. I'd like to add to your points, especially for brick and mortar stores going online, make sure the shopping experience is good! Few of the stores we have 10x harder experiences in shopping and browsing.