What We Can Learn from Amazon.com

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what we can learn from amazon.com

Everyone wants to know "What's the best book selling web site on the Internet?".

My answer is Amazon.com. They were not only the first, but the most inventive and since they constantly improve it, and everyone copies it, it's a good model for what your publishing company should be doing on your own site if you're interested in selling books directly to the consumer market.

Let's look at why I think they are so good at selling books.

Ease of Navigation

Somewhere in this site, there is an annotated database of millions of books. Yet, a visitor never feels overwhelmed when searching for a particular book. Their front page has many different ways for a buyer to browse, search and select so no matter whether you are interested in "best sellers", books by genre or subject, books by a particular author, or looking for suggestions, there is an entry point for you. You can navigate the site by choosing a tab at the top, a hot link of subjects down the side, or hot links embedded in the content of the home page.

This site is a good example about how to appeal to the varying shopping and information gathering styles of millions of people. Even though the home page needs to be scrolled in order to see the entire page, a majority of the content and features are placed "above the fold" (or before the scroll).

And, more importantly, once you leave the home page, the navigation remains constant at the top (so you can always go "home" and "back") while the hot links at the side are customized to give you more in-depth choices. No matter where I end up within this huge site, I feel comfortable, anchored and secure.

Ease of Buying

Again, Amazon.com popularized the shopping cart icon as well as claiming to own the "one-click" buying technology. But what's compelling about this is the way they always allow a person to purchase regardless of where they are in the site. The ability to put things in a cart and continue to shop is critical to online shoppers. One of the signs of a newbie web site is a site that sends you to an order form that you have to print out and snail mail to the company. Or, a site that has developed its own shopping method that is totally different than the norm. People don't like re-learning how to do things every time the go to a different web site or store and will quickly click on to another site if they can't "shop" like they are used to.

Great Customer Service and Feedback

I'll never forget buying my first book from Amazon.com a couple of months after their site went live. When I retrieved my email that day, there was an acknowledgement of my order (thanking me) and a confirmation of the books I ordered (personalized) and an indication of when I could expect delivery. That made me feel secure. The order didn't disappear into thin air. A few days later, I was even more impressed. They actually emailed me when the package left their warehouse and I knew to expect it within a few days.

I compare this to my experience with ordering a couple of shirts from REI last Christmas. Their shopping cart was fine but when I clicked the "buy" button, I somehow got to a page that told me an error had occurred but the page said "we have received your order and you will be notified via email". I left the site feeling anxious (after all, I needed these shirts for Christmas), checked my email (nothing) and breathed a sigh of relief the next day (too late for my taste) when I did receive a confirming email from REI saying they received my order.

Because of the newness of developing relationships with online stores, customers need extra handholding and support – especially the first time they order. Instant, personalized email confirmation is an important part of building this relationship.

Helpful Information and Quality Content

I suppose I'm going to make a lot of enemies right now but as an avid book buyer, I have to say that shopping for books at Amazon.com is a better experience for me than shopping at my local bookstore. Why? Because of the way they have organized and gathered information about the books I am considering purchasing.

Of course, the advantages of buying a book in a bookstore is the ability to touch, leaf through, and read some of the content before you buy. But unless there is a person at the bookstore that is knowledgeable and can recommend one book over the other, you're pretty much on your own when choosing a particular book. The Amazon.com database was built with an intelligence that other databases can't match (although they are trying to copy it). Besides the usual book jacket, description, reviews, and author information commonly found on the book itself, they have added other valuable information you can't find in a bookstore (or in publisher's catalogs) such as excerpts of chapters, reviews from the general public, a star rating of customer reviews, recommendations on other books or authors that people who purchased the book have also purchased, and for literature, they have indexed some of the content so you can find more books on Ireland, if you've just purchased Tara Road, for instance.

Now I know that we in the publishing industry, tend to denigrate unedited content such as reviews from – god forbid – a person instead of an authoritative source, and, we also wonder about privacy and sharing information on what someone has purchased at a bookstore but let's put aside our biases and see how this is helpful to a consumer.

My husband is a baseball fanatic and has a collection of more than 300 books in his library. Every Christmas, I try to add a new book (one that he hasn't already rushed out to buy!). When I went to Amazon.com and searched for baseball books, up came the first 20 titles. Now, I'm just a baseball fan and not a fanatic so I didn't know which book to choose. I read the reviews from PW, Booklist, et al. But most of them were descriptive of the content rather than passionate about the book. So, I read the consumer reviews and that was where I found out whether or not this book would appeal to a fanatic rather than a fan. These reviews were highly entertaining and easy to discern which person had the most literate evaluation.

Not all the information they have added is helpful to me, in particular, such as the Amazon.com sales rank, but most of it makes me feel like a smarter consumer and shopper. On the Internet, more information is better as long as you organize it in a way people can get it quickly and go back to where they were after they read it.

Viral Marketing Through Affiliate Program

Amazon.com was also a pioneer of understanding that links could be a powerful tool to building site traffic and to encourage these links, they developed an affiliate program. This program pays commissions to web sites that link to Amazon.com.

And, the program is so easy to implement that it appealed to everyone from Mom & Pop sites to general business sites. As a result, they have links to more than 350,000 web sites on the Internet.

Why is this so smart? Well, for one thing, they are reaching potential customers they couldn't reach otherwise –- for FREE. Most individual web sites are devoted to small market niches – family and friends, people interested in genealogy, sports, history, education, you name it. Business sites are also generally niched into a particular industry or particular product. Online stores that are a mirror of their brick & mortar counterparts are also generally niched such as outdoor clothing, toys, candles, housewares, etc. Because books are published in every niche, it makes sense to create thousands of online bookstores – each one serving a separate niche. Amazon.com made it easy for each of the niche web sites to put together a "recommended book list" and link to Amazon.com to fill the order.

This affiliate strategy has many advantages. First, it pays a small commission back to the web site. Second, it has created more than 350,000 "partners" or "sales reps" who are out in the market promoting Amazon.com. Thirdly, it has expanded the bookstore to more than 350,000 locations in the world wide web. That's much faster than Barnes & Noble can build brick & mortar stores! Lastly, it's free marketing and promotion for Amazon.com.

Personalization

When you've been in direct marketing as long as I have, the one thing that has been pounded into my head over the years is that personalization increases response. In direct mail, we personalize by selecting specific lists, addressing our envelopes and letters by name, and creating compelling offers that would appeal to this particular person.

Web site marketing is the same.

While I sometimes wonder about my privacy (and this issue does concern me!) I have to say that when I visit Amazon.com and they say:

Hello, Carol Waugh. We have Sports & Outdoors, Home & Garden, Mystery & Thrillers and other book recommendations for you. (If you're not Carol Waugh, click here.)

I wonder how often someone other than "Carol Waugh" is seeing this message! But in actuality, I find this helpful in many ways. I know that they have analyzed my book purchases in the past and found out I like books in the Home & Garden category. But what I find even more interesting, they know I have a shade garden so when I click on "Home & Garden" the recommendations do not include "Gardening in the Full Sun". And, the recommendations for "Sports & Outdoors" didn't include any books on Football.

More interestingly, when I looked at their product recommendations in other areas, they recommended the DVD "Shakespeare in Love". Now, I happen to know that the only DVD I had purchased before was "Goldfinger" for my brother. I suppose they must have weighted the fact that I was a female (but how did they know this?) over my preference for adventure and decided that all females would like to purchase a romantic movie.

I believe we are seeing the tip of the iceberg in this area and as new and more sophisticated software is developed, Internet companies will be able to have an advantage over more traditional direct mail marketers. They will be able to track and record every interaction from each visitor – whether or not they become a customer. This will be a powerful advantage in the future.

Haven't They done Anything Wrong?

I thought you would ask that! Of course, they're not perfect. In fact, I think they could learn a lot by understanding that the Internet is not the ONLY marketing channel in the universe. And, that combining multiple channels results in a better performance. But who am I to tell Amazon.com what to do.

I will tell you one amusing story. One day, the Amazon.com site was down and I needed a book. So I called them to place the order. I was told they couldn't take orders over the phone! I was shocked! Now, how many of us would refuse to fulfill a customer's order regardless of how it arrived: phone, fax, email, snail mail, etc.

Conclusion

Who knows if Amazon.com will ever make a profit. Their business model is yet unproven. But the one thing we do know, is that they have been able to attract a large and loyal customer database. And, we know that this is the key to future revenues. So, take a look at the customer experience they have pioneered, compare that to your company and learn from the innovators on the Internet. Amazon can teach us all a lot!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This article was written by Carol Ann Waugh, President of Xcellent Marketing, a marketing and new business development firm specializing in the educational and library market. Xcellent Marketing offers a variety of marketing services to help publishers increase their revenues and profits from identifying new markets, providing critiques of web sites and marketing communications such as direct mail, catalogs, advertisements, etc. as well as developing effective traditional as well as Internet-based marketing plans. Carol can be reached at (303) 388-5215 or at cwaugh@xcellentmarketing.com.

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