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No they wouldn't. Here are a few reasons: - The checkout path is the most important part of a site that sells consumer products, the people you lose here are r

by mixmax 18y ago

No they wouldn't. Here are a few reasons: - The checkout path is the most important part of a site that sells consumer products, the people you lose here are ready to buy: If you lose them during the process it's money right out the window. For this reason it's the most optimised part of any serious retail site. - This is a pretty standard trap, and any usability professional will know this. I would be very surprised if Amazon, even years ago, was designed by Jeff Bezos 14 year old cousin. - Amazon is known for running split tests and numbers on their site to see how something works. They have done this since they launched. The thought that they somehow didn't do so on the checkout path, the most important part of the site, is pretty far fetched. - Jeff Bezos is a numbers guy - he used to be a stock broker, and is crazy about optimising and testing. It's like saying Steve Jobs approved the new line of Ipods being Scottish tartan with the user interface outsourced to Microsift.

mattmaroon 18y ago
Well, they almost certainly did if this story is true. Please point me out one other company that's worth around $25b and has the online sales to do improve by $300m per year. Just one. Regardless of what you think about Amazon specifically, who else fits this profile? It's not as if there are $25b companies doing hundreds of millions in sales online that you don't know about. This is a standard trap now, but he was a numbers guy back when it wasn't, and he hired someone to optimize and test. They found that error.
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mynameishere 18y ago
he used to be a stock broker, He was a quant. Huge difference. Any idiot could be a broker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst
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vlad 18y ago
It's nice of Matt to find counterexamples to your arguments. But you should know that pointing out that you use circular logic is enough to show that your argument is not valid (in other words, no counterexample is really needed). Now, this doesn't necessarily say anything about whether this company is Amazon or not, but it does show that your proof, that there is no way this is Amazon, does not hold water. (The first two quoted lines are my own interpretation, others are quotes.) "Amazon is a big company. Big companies don't make amateur mistakes. That's why they're big." "Therefore, Amazon doesn't make amateur mistakes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question (Repeating this type of logic over and over is...) http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalflawsinreasoning/a/repetition.htm http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalflawsinreasoning/a/repeti... "The checkout path is the most important part of a site that sells consumer products, the people you lose here are ready to buy: If you lose them during the process it's money right out the window. For this reason it's the most optimised part of any serious retail site." http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Red%20herring http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Red%20herring "This is a pretty standard trap, and any usability professional will know this." http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Argumentum%20ad%20populum http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Argumentum%20ad... (Continuing to post more arguments feeling you must be right since no evidence has been provided to the contrary, is...) http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ignorance.html http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ignorance.html "The thought that they somehow didn't do so on the checkout path, the most important part of the site, is pretty far fetched." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man (nobody said they thought Amazon absolutely decided to skip usability testing of checkout functionality. Also, for example, they could have tried but did not think of changing it, or ran out of good subjects who hadn't already used Amazon's checkout page, bad selection of candidates, poor interpretation of results from the split tests, or had lots of bureaucracy or competing work or designs of checkout incompatible with such changes, human error, that this looks easy in retrospect but not something they thought of at the time, person in charge of that being complacent, etc.)
DLWormwood 18y ago
> It's like saying Steve Jobs approved the new line of Ipods being Scottish tartan with the user interface outsourced to Microsift. I know you're trying to be funny, but soon after Jobs' return to Apple after the "NeXT exile," things really did seem that surreal for a bit... http://images.google.com/images?q=flower%20power%20imac http://images.google.com/images?q=flower%20power%20imac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac
jimbokun 18y ago
"new line of Ipods being Scottish tartan" That's just the customized Carnegie Mellon version.

by mixmax 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago

Well, they almost certainly did if this story is true. Please point me out one other company that's worth around $25b and has the online sales to do improve by $300m per year. Just one. Regardless of what you think about Amazon specifically, who else fits this profile? It's not as if there are $25b companies doing hundreds of millions in sales online that you don't know about. This is a standard trap now, but he was a numbers guy back when it wasn't, and he hired someone to optimize and test. They found that error.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

mynameishere 18y ago

he used to be a stock broker, He was a quant. Huge difference. Any idiot could be a broker. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

vlad 18y ago

It's nice of Matt to find counterexamples to your arguments. But you should know that pointing out that you use circular logic is enough to show that your argument is not valid (in other words, no counterexample is really needed). Now, this doesn't necessarily say anything about whether this company is Amazon or not, but it does show that your proof, that there is no way this is Amazon, does not hold water. (The first two quoted lines are my own interpretation, others are quotes.) "Amazon is a big company. Big companies don't make amateur mistakes. That's why they're big." "Therefore, Amazon doesn't make amateur mistakes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question (Repeating this type of logic over and over is...) http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalflawsinreasoning/a/repetition.htm http://atheism.about.com/od/logicalflawsinreasoning/a/repeti... "The checkout path is the most important part of a site that sells consumer products, the people you lose here are ready to buy: If you lose them during the process it's money right out the window. For this reason it's the most optimised part of any serious retail site." http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Red%20herring http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Red%20herring "This is a pretty standard trap, and any usability professional will know this." http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Argumentum%20ad%20populum http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/fallacies.html#Argumentum%20ad... (Continuing to post more arguments feeling you must be right since no evidence has been provided to the contrary, is...) http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ignorance.html http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ignorance.html "The thought that they somehow didn't do so on the checkout path, the most important part of the site, is pretty far fetched." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man (nobody said they thought Amazon absolutely decided to skip usability testing of checkout functionality. Also, for example, they could have tried but did not think of changing it, or ran out of good subjects who hadn't already used Amazon's checkout page, bad selection of candidates, poor interpretation of results from the split tests, or had lots of bureaucracy or competing work or designs of checkout incompatible with such changes, human error, that this looks easy in retrospect but not something they thought of at the time, person in charge of that being complacent, etc.)

DLWormwood 18y ago

> It's like saying Steve Jobs approved the new line of Ipods being Scottish tartan with the user interface outsourced to Microsift. I know you're trying to be funny, but soon after Jobs' return to Apple after the "NeXT exile," things really did seem that surreal for a bit... http://images.google.com/images?q=flower%20power%20imac http://images.google.com/images?q=flower%20power%20imac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac

jimbokun 18y ago

"new line of Ipods being Scottish tartan" That's just the customized Carnegie Mellon version.