
Objectives
Amazon.com seeks to be the world's most customer-centric company, where
customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
Amazon.com opened its virtual doors on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today
offers Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com and sellers list millions of unique new and
used items in categories such as electronics, computers, kitchen and housewares, books,
music, DVDs, videos, camera and photo items, toys, baby and baby registry, software,
computer and video games, cell phones and service, tools and hardware, travel services,
magazine subscriptions and outdoor living items.
Business Model
Business to business. Business to consumers. Amazon.com seeks to allow individuals and businesses to sell their own items. Large retailers like Nordstorm, Land’s End and target use Amazon.com to sell their products in addition to selling them through their own web sites. Amazon leases space to these retailers, who use Amazon.com as a supplement outlet for their online sales. Through Amazon Marketplace, zShops and Auctions, any business or individual can sell virtually anything to Amazon.com's millions of customers, and with Amazon.com
Characteristics
The Amazon site looks to attract just about any type of consumer. The Amazon site
looks to encompass visitors with such a variety of characteristics because it offers such a
variety of products.
Search Engine: Amazon has a powerful search engine system allowing its visitors to
type in what they are looking as soon as they enter the site. If they are just browsing the
site and not looking for anything imparticular, Amazon has also designed a quality
system for this as well.
1-Click Buying: The 1-click buying feature invented by Amazon has reduced the needed
to enter repetitive information and save customers time. This is a major bonus for the
Amazon site.
Bottom of the Page Deals: Another invention Amazon has come up with is the
listing of special deals and offers at the bottom of the page.
Recent Activity: At the bottom of most pages of the Amazon site, you will see a record
of your recent activity. This enables visitors to easily find what they may have been
interested in, but may decided not to bookmark.
Screen Optimization, Was optimized for viewing at 800x600 screen resolution, but also
changed to meet higher resolutions.
Contrasting colours, so that consumers won’t miss out on products and product categories. Adds in pictures of products so that consumers can have a feel of the product and adds colour to the website.
Icon of a small gold treasure box to depict new deals.
Links
Amazon.com and its affiliates operate seven retail Web sites: www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.co.jp, www.amazon.ca, and http://www.joyo.com/.
Provide Amazon services, Amazon blog.
Link to other stores and featured partner websites.
Strengths
1) Excellent layout. A horizontal category listing across the top for easy access and
navigating of the site. The left side of the site, going vertical, offers searching and
browse menus. The site’s layout stays generally static as to avoid confusion when users
drill down into the site.
2) Quick response time. The site loads very quickly and has a good mixture of pictures
and text, thus not bogging down the loading time with pictures, but not boring the visitor
with plain text.
3) Stores never close. Except for the occasional site outage, virtual stores never close their doors. Keeping stores open around the clock is something few offline retailers can afford to do.
4)When you buy something, you get it. In the rare case that there is a problem. You get a clear email telling you so.
5)Relevant cross sales. Clicking on a product or category almost always drags up other relevant products that customer is likely to want.
6)Uses sample content such as book excerpts and music snippets to get consumers as close to the products as possible in the virtual world.
Weakness
1)Delay in getting items. Whenever a consumer needs a physical item immediately, they will not go online to order it. The several days that it generally takes for items to arrive decreases the overall attractiveness of ordering online under certain circumstances.
2)Consumer confidence. Many people like to kick the proverbial tires of what they’re buying, but physically seeing and touching items is not an option online. Consumers may get items that aren’t exactly what they expected.
3) Lousy UI for specialized product categories. Unless you know in advance the exact product you want, Amazon’s category pages make it basically impossible to identify the best offerings.
Payment scheme
Payments, sellers can accept credit card transactions, avoiding the hassles of offline
payments. Reuters - Amazon.com Inc. has opened its payment system to other Web sites in a move that would pit it against eBay Inc's PayPal.(AUG 6 2007)
Comments:
The Amazon site invokes some of the latest technologies to allow its customers to attract
and retain its customers. The site allows customers to personalize and customize much
of the Amazon.com site. These customizable functions include: Alerts, Available to
Order notification, Product Recommendations, Your Store, Your “Gold Box”, and many
more. The website contains up to date content and a great feature is the ability to read
real customer reviews of the products. Amazon.com invokes a custom made affiliate
program. The affiliate program allows its associates to almost recreate the Amazon site
and call it their own! Amazon has one of the most sophisticated and successful affiliate
programs around.
No comments:
Post a Comment