Podcast: Online Shopping

By | January 12, 2006

From the BBC World Service World Business Report: Online shopping

Here’s an excerpt from the original WSJ.com piece (subscription only, I’m afraid):

Why does buying stuff online still look so similar to buying offline?

First, Web sites still use the whole browsing-shopping basket-checkout metaphor, an approach that even real world shops are trying to get away from. Then you have in-your-face promotions, top 10s, on-sale items, buy-two-get-one-free offers, which to me don’t sound that different to your average supermarket gimmicks. Amazon has made some steps forward, such as pointing out that purchasers who bought a certain product have also bought other products, and allowing users to search for text inside books. But these are hardly huge leaps. After all, couldn’t we look inside books in a bookstore, or ask an assistant for suggestions about similar books?

And for those looking for links, I mentioned Etsy in the piece; a couple of others worth checking out are Kaboodle and Wists.

One thought on “Podcast: Online Shopping

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.