Amazon.com - Web Dinosaur Still Kicking
Amazon.com has been around for what seems like an eternity in Internet time; it was launched in 1995 as on online bookstore and now sells videos, music, groceries and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Amazon.com and its aggressive business plan of high volume, low (or no) margin sales off of a deep book list have been blamed for the downfall of the small, local bookstores. I won't dispute that from an economic standpoint, but I think it unfortunately obscures the interesting things that Amazon.com does as a book retailer. In fact, I would argue that even without the price and depth advantages it enjoys over brick and mortar retailers, Amazon.com provides a superior book buying experience.
How so? Let's take a look how your experience might shake out if you are thinking about buying the popular new book, Age of Turbulence, by former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. If you go into a local bookstore you will almost surely find a copy available sitting in a central display. At that point, if you are determined to buy that book, then you go ahead and purchase it, easy enough.
However, if you are not really sure, what do you do? You can ask an employee of the store and probably get a decent review that way, but in general you are left to ponder the dust jacket of the book and perhaps a cut-out of a New York Times review that has been placed in the display.
On the other hand, let's say you point your browser over to Amazon.com and bring up Greenspan's book. You are now confronted with a torrent of information. You can see a quick "star" rating, watch a video of people's reactions to the book, read a few editorial reviews, numerous customer reviews and blog posts by Alan Greenspan. The book is further placed in context as you can see what other customers who looked at this book bought or viewed and what users' top books lists it made.
Whichever way all this information sways you, you are certainly making a more informed decision that you were at the local bookstore. Also, even if you don't purchase anything, you can learn by clicking around and following the links to other related content. In effect, this linked content lets you browse the online book store in a somewhat analogous way to browsing the shelves of a brick and mortar store.
In other words, buying the book on Amazon.com is a much richer experience than going to your local store. Amazon.com may not be a "sexy" brand, but it perfectly illustrates the promise of Internet applications, which takes something we are used to, buying books, and adds online features to make it better. If you then add back price and the depth of available books as points of comparison, Amazon.com becomes even more appealing.
As an avid reader, while I enjoy walking around my local book stores, I can also appreciate the features Amazon.com have brought to the book buying experience. Putting on my other hat as a software consultant, I can learn a lot by studying what Amazon.com has done to enhance the user experience of their product by leveraging uniquely online features.