Smaller Sites Should No Longer Emulate Amazon
I have been saying this for years: Amazon can get away with certain usability techniques that do not work well for smaller e-commerce sites. Jakob Nielsen agrees in his article “Amazon No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce.
One of the things that Amazon has that smaller sites do not is they have a trust built with the general populace. In terms of the Internet, it is an old, trusted brand name.
I remember I was talking to an e-commerce site about the fact that they force people to log in to see the contents of their shopping cart. When I asked why they did this, they replied “Because Amazon does it.” In fact, they refused to do any usability testing to see if this could be why their conversion rates were so low. Because ‘Amazon did it’ they saw no reason to do their own tests to see what was best for their site.Because people know Amazon, they do not fear putting in an email address or other personal information to “get something” such as see the contents of their cart.
The thing is, usability testing doesn’t have to be a pain in the rear or time consuming. Sometimes, all it takes is making a change on the web site and watching the metrics numbers for a week or two. Or, with wireless coffee shops in many cities, it is easy to buy someone a cup of coffee to watch them use your web site.