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If you want me to buy something, I want a queue, damn it!
And no, I don’t mean a queue in the technical sense, I don’t care how you build your stuff. What I care about is the customer experience.
Here is a simple problem, I go to your site and see three things that I would like to buy, but I am only going to buy one thing right now. In most cases, I have no real way of putting away those things that I am interested at to a later time.
A common examples, both of which are really annoying: Amazon Kindle.
I usually buy books after spending some time looking for them, which takes time. But I generally don’t buy more than one Kindle book at a time, simply because I often get distracted by something else and skip reading the second or third book in a particular order. So something that I would have loved to see is a way to put away a book for later. You know, something like a wish list? Except that those aren’t available for Kindle for some strange reason (probably someone figured out that immediate satisfaction negates them).
I am left with tracking this sort of stuff externally, and that just add more work. If you want me to buy something, make it easier for me to do so. And I want to come back later, you really want to make it easier.
Comments
Yup. iTunes is -especially- bad at this. They have a wishlist of sorts, but it's crap, and I can't put pre-release stuff in it.
bah.
Maybe you could download free samples as a substitute. Install Kindle for PC and have the samples downloaded there. That way you will have the list of "future reads". But I see your point...
Many sites do have wishlists.
Or are you talking about providing something that will provide a wishlist aggregator across sites?
Might be an interesting project actually.
You can use amazons universal feature for tracking other sites againt amazon itself. That would be a way to add the unaddable to you wish list.
It's not the same as a true Amazon wishlist, but the Kindle does have a "Save for Later" option. Unfortunately, it's only accessible on the device.
When you're on the details page for a book in the Kindle store, there's a "Save for Later" option on the menu. When you're on the main store page, the menu contains an option for viewing those saved items.
I wish it were a full Amazon wishlist that could be managed from both the device and the web site, and all you can do with items there is add and delete (no grouping/sorting/prioritizing)... but it's better than having to track a separate list away from the device.
Note: I've got a first-gen Kindle... but I assume that feature's there in Kindle 2 as well.
Developers often don't think the same way the "average" customer thinks, which is why design decisions should rarely be left to developers. This to me sounds like one of those situations the reason being is that the percentage of customers who really want this (to an extent that they'd refuse to use the service otherwise) is probably incredibly small.
That doesn't make it a bad idea, but I think the large majority of customers are satisified with "Wish Lists" (or differently named but similar features).
The most simple solution I can think of is to create a WishList on Amazon and simply lookup the non-Kindle version of the book you are interested in and add it to the WishList.
Not convenient, but hey, at least you have the ISBD etc. available to you and all the software you need to track everything in one place. In other words, it's the path of least resistance.
JD,
That assumes that I use the device, I am not in US, so I am using the website exclusively.
I agree completely. I've also had this trouble with amazon video on demand. I go looking for something to watch, find 10 things, buy the top 1, and then lose the other 9. Next time I want something to watch, I have to start over from scratch, and their store really isn't that good and filtering towards things I want to see.
+1 vote for Queues.
Kindle books have had full wishlist access for about 2 days now. nozama.typepad.com/.../make-a-wish.html
This looks to my like an example where people are delegating responsibility for everything to computers. What ever happened to remembering things? The more we hand over to computers, the less we seem to be able to cope with as a society. Look at all those idiots who drive into lakes because their GPS told them to (I know one personally). How many of us have had their ability to spell reduced because of over reliance upon spell-checkers?
So sometimes it's better if computers don't do things for us.
Chris,
I might remember a book or two, but I can't remember 80 of them.
Haha... if you can't remember the name of 80 books, how on earth are you going to remember their contents? :)
I have no experience with Kindle, but ironically Amazon has the exact feature you describe in their standard interface and I love them for it. I have a few dozen things in my "saved for later" part of the cart, that I pick and choose from gradually.
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