Amazon is the peoples favorite---WSJ E-Commerce survey
The Seattle-based e-commerce pioneer may be struggling to find a profit, but it's the hands-down winner in our survey. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed included it on their list, and many of those ranked it No. 1.
There's no single reason so many selected Amazon.com Inc. "They do tons right," says one respondent.
Bargain hunters like the discounts, while bibliophiles appreciate the selection, especially for hard-to-find books. Respondents say that the site is easy to navigate, and that Amazon makes it easy to buy, with its "one-click" checkout and the ability to save items in a shopping cart for return visits. "When I know exactly what I want," one respondent says, "I can be in and out of their site with a purchase completed in, literally, seconds."
Amazon's designers also give visitors lots of different ways to find what they're looking for. It isn't easy to duplicate the pleasure of browsing for books and records in a physical store, but Amazon comes close, with lists of recommendations from other shoppers and suggestions from the site based on what other visitors have purchased.
One respondent, however, finds the personalized recommendations "Orwellian." "Once I ordered one cookbook," writes the shopper, "and all of a sudden my recommendations were populated by cookbooks -- not fun."
--Olu E. |
