Only if they can overcome their background. AMZN started from nothing as a pure Internet company, no baggage from the past. BNBN comes at the Internet from a different direction, bricks & mortar, where speed is not the prime mover. AMZN effectively set the rules, they were there first and now BNBN is playing catch-up. As a heavy user of book sites on the Internet, I can tell you that BNBN suffers from several design problems that so far they seem unable to correct, to wit:
A slow site. During the week it can take as much as 3 times as long to get a result on BNBN compared to AMZN. Why use BNBN? If I'm on a short break, and it takes 45 seconds to get results from BNBN, and only 15 seconds from AMZN, where do you think I will go?
A backwards search method. AMZN with 8.4 million uses asks for Author/Title, in that order. Get used to that, then go to BNBN, and BNBN wants Title/Author. If you don't realize what field you are in, then when you click Search you get garbage back. What if Honda only tried to sell cars in the US with right side steering?
And most important, they don't fully utilize their current advantage over AMZN. BNBN has the option of finding a used copy of the book you want, perhaps at a lower price, perhaps because a new copy is not available. But rather than make this an automatic choice, they require the user to see the link to the Out-Of-Print site, and then click on it to see the books. Why can't the computer do this for them?
Especially when the margins on used books are much higher? This is a tremendous advantage that BNBN has over AMZN, but for some reason they don't see this.
I'll be curious to see how this all plays out. |
