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I wish Amazon would try different shopping experiences online, versus the hellscape of overoptimization that is Amazon.com. Part of the appeal of a bookstore i

by npunt 5y ago

I wish Amazon would try different shopping experiences online, versus the hellscape of overoptimization that is Amazon.com. Part of the appeal of a bookstore is to have a different shopping experience than what you get online or even at other physical stores. It's walking over to a section, picking up a book, seeing what resonates. It's 'browsing' in a slower, calmer form, closer to the reading experience itself. Why doesn't Amazon try to make that? Replicate that experience in a new brand, call it 'booklovers.com' or something. Make it a cut down subset of features and information, with the book's content more at the center of the experience and easier to browse, along with the books 'next to' it. More curated, less metadata. Being freed of physical world means we can have many very different experiences without dealing with the scarcity of real estate. Yet Amazon tries to standardize the shopping experience, to the detriment of many categories of products that deserve their own approach.

fassssst 5y ago
There’s a massive opportunity to make VR shopping experiences. Just try Redfin VR and see how cool it is for shopping for houses. I want to shop for other big purchases that way.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Houses is an interesting one. It would massively improve the experience if they just took some more photos or used one of those products which builds a 3D scan of the property. But they seem to sell fast with 3 photos and an inaccurate floorplan so why bother I guess. Maybe we need to just cut out the agent and get home owners to list their own properties and build the scans with lidar on their phones.
erehweb 5y ago
I think abebooks.com is owned by Amazon - maybe they are trying something like that there.
- bckygldstn 5y ago
  Amazon also owns bookdepository.com (and goodreads.com)
  - drusepth 5y ago
    Less well known, Goodreads' biggest competitor (LibraryThing) is also an Amazon subsidiary.
    - iudqnolq 5y ago
      They own a minority share (40%)
Spooky23 5y ago
It’s funny I just spoke to a colleague about this a few hours ago. Anker.com is basically an Amazon storefront without the shitscape. Amazon makes so much money from bullshit at retail that they cannot enable basic features that even not so great physical retailers get right. Case in point: try buying windshield wipers for multiple cars. You’ll get ads for incompatible blades and tricked into a subscription. It’s literally worse than the 1980 experience of flipping through a torn, filthy book hanging from a shelf by a string.
- primax 5y ago
  Amazon uses AI to make highly optimised storefronts. Why don't they also use AI to make highly pleasing storefronts and target other markets? Amazon is the everything store, but it presents like a big box store. Why not build mini Boutique stores or more of an IKEA experience?
- vlark 5y ago
  AutoZone stores still have the book hanging by a string in their physical stores. And it's faster to search and find the right blades, too.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Exactly! It’s bizarre that it’s faster and more reliable to go to Autozone. Another funny one is lightbulbs - good luck unless you are looking for a particular part number.
Gigachad 5y ago
Steam tried this with their curators feature. You can subscribe to ordinary users and see their personal recommendations/reviews. Not idea how well this feature is used but personally I found the general AI recommendations to be better and most of the curators to over blow everything and call a game literally unplayable because they could only get 59fps on one scene.
- philistine 5y ago
  That curators feature was buried way too deep into the interface. What OP is proposing is the vision to divorce the URL from the warehouses. Allow some teams within Amazon to make websites to buy books or other stuff from bespoke URLs. I think at the scale that Amazon has, it would only help.
bwb 5y ago
I am working on this :)! Shepherd.com, only 10 months old but i have a lot more formats planned as we get further along! I use NLP on the backend to tie books to Wikipedia topics and working to improve that and bring in genre filters/pages soon. Let me know what you think (ben@shepherd.com)
guynamedloren 5y ago
This is a fantastic idea. All the benefits of Amazon (fullfilment, prime shipping) but with a better user experience. Now that I think of it.. they do experiment with things like this. For example, near the top of my Amazon homepage right now, I see "Influencer fashion finds". Clicking in reveals some kind of modernized QVC social media livestream experience. Further down on the homepage is a combination of what appears to be algorithmically curated shopping lists, and human curated lists. It's all very messy and disorienting to navigate, but I guess they're.. trying?

by npunt 5y ago

fassssst 5y ago

There’s a massive opportunity to make VR shopping experiences. Just try Redfin VR and see how cool it is for shopping for houses. I want to shop for other big purchases that way.

Gigachad 5y ago
Houses is an interesting one. It would massively improve the experience if they just took some more photos or used one of those products which builds a 3D scan of the property. But they seem to sell fast with 3 photos and an inaccurate floorplan so why bother I guess. Maybe we need to just cut out the agent and get home owners to list their own properties and build the scans with lidar on their phones.

erehweb 5y ago

I think abebooks.com is owned by Amazon - maybe they are trying something like that there.

bckygldstn 5y ago
Amazon also owns bookdepository.com (and goodreads.com)
- drusepth 5y ago
  Less well known, Goodreads' biggest competitor (LibraryThing) is also an Amazon subsidiary.
  - iudqnolq 5y ago
    They own a minority share (40%)

Spooky23 5y ago

It’s funny I just spoke to a colleague about this a few hours ago. Anker.com is basically an Amazon storefront without the shitscape. Amazon makes so much money from bullshit at retail that they cannot enable basic features that even not so great physical retailers get right. Case in point: try buying windshield wipers for multiple cars. You’ll get ads for incompatible blades and tricked into a subscription. It’s literally worse than the 1980 experience of flipping through a torn, filthy book hanging from a shelf by a string.

primax 5y ago
Amazon uses AI to make highly optimised storefronts. Why don't they also use AI to make highly pleasing storefronts and target other markets? Amazon is the everything store, but it presents like a big box store. Why not build mini Boutique stores or more of an IKEA experience?
vlark 5y ago
AutoZone stores still have the book hanging by a string in their physical stores. And it's faster to search and find the right blades, too.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Exactly! It’s bizarre that it’s faster and more reliable to go to Autozone. Another funny one is lightbulbs - good luck unless you are looking for a particular part number.

Gigachad 5y ago

Steam tried this with their curators feature. You can subscribe to ordinary users and see their personal recommendations/reviews. Not idea how well this feature is used but personally I found the general AI recommendations to be better and most of the curators to over blow everything and call a game literally unplayable because they could only get 59fps on one scene.

philistine 5y ago
That curators feature was buried way too deep into the interface. What OP is proposing is the vision to divorce the URL from the warehouses. Allow some teams within Amazon to make websites to buy books or other stuff from bespoke URLs. I think at the scale that Amazon has, it would only help.

bwb 5y ago

I am working on this :)! Shepherd.com, only 10 months old but i have a lot more formats planned as we get further along! I use NLP on the backend to tie books to Wikipedia topics and working to improve that and bring in genre filters/pages soon. Let me know what you think (ben@shepherd.com)

guynamedloren 5y ago

This is a fantastic idea. All the benefits of Amazon (fullfilment, prime shipping) but with a better user experience. Now that I think of it.. they do experiment with things like this. For example, near the top of my Amazon homepage right now, I see "Influencer fashion finds". Clicking in reveals some kind of modernized QVC social media livestream experience. Further down on the homepage is a combination of what appears to be algorithmically curated shopping lists, and human curated lists. It's all very messy and disorienting to navigate, but I guess they're.. trying?