Amazon is a big online retailer, and I’ve spent untold thousands there since 1998. I still shop there regularly, but had not really paid much attention to what the’ve been doing with their website. Until today, when I noticed a user editably “product wiki” section. I did a little more digging and found they’ve added a slew of Web 2.0-ish features.
Of course, they are already well known for their customer review functionality, but now there is a ProductWiki, customer lists, tags, and Customer Discussions.
They’ve thrown in everything, including the kitchen sink. Unfortunately, they’ve degraded the consumer experience in the process. How so? Take a look at this image, which shows the entire top-to-bottom of one web page for James Frey’s book A Million Little Pieces. The full-size image is 766 pixels wide by 11, 234 pixels high. The HTML alone weighs in at nearly 100 KB, not counting images, CSS or other externally linked files. Who the hell is going to read through all this crap? And is my mom really going to know the when to leave a review vs. a discussion? Or whether to tag or add to a list?
Amazon has done some remarkable things in online retailing, but they’ve fallen victim to scope creep, or Web 2.0-itis, or some other malady that’s bloated their product page beyond comprehension — with a million little pieces. It’s time for Bezos & Co. to take it back to basics.
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