Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category
What does Amazon have and you don’t?
I don’t believe there is a single usability book out there that doesn’t have at least one reference to the Amazon website. The usability guys and gals working at the website have nailed it down. But what’s their secret? What do they have and others don’t.
How did they help Amazon to get to the amazing number of 76 000 000 unique customers since they launched. 
Focusing on getting great content from the lunatics
If there is something to copy from Amazon that is to start focusing on getting great content on your website and… lunatics. Basically, having one will almost automatically lead to the other.
Why great content? Firstly because great content is what engages users. Content doesn’t just mean reviews of blog posts. Content can mean anything that adds value to the end user, from pictures to video, audio and text.
Who are the lunatics? Highly engaged users. I’ve been talking about them and how to focus on increasing their number. As a benchmark, Amazon has 1 lunatic for every 1300 purchasers. At a rate of 2% conversion rate that means 0.001%. At this rate Amazon gains around 1100 new lunatics each month.
You shall respect thy visitor
Visitors are not stupid
No, they just have better things to do than to figure out how certain websites work. Steve Krug truly believes that the secret to web usability is the following law: Don’t make me think. It’s like when going to a restaurant you have to figure out on how to sit at a table without chairs. You won’t. You’ll just move on to the next restaurant (unless you are very hungry
).
Think of how many times you heard managers saying that their website visitors are stupid or not very smart. Now go tell them a little secret: their website visitors are unhappy, not stupid. It can be because they can’t find what they are looking for, the website reacts in ways that they don’t expect or that it takes a lot of effort to get to the desired content.