A Short Introduction on Amazon
Amazon was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003. It has also an international website where users from all over the world will be able to purchase. The countries covered included Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and China.
Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore and it soon diversified its product lines, adding VHs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s,computer softwares, video games, electronics, apparel, furnitures, food, toys, etc
Amazon.com also does provide an area where the users will be able to sell their items back to Amazon that was previously bought from Amazon. Basically it is a Business to Consumer and a Consumer to Consumer type of model.
To further elaborate the site, we will be covering the topics as follows:
1) Purposes
2) Features (e.g. business model, payment scheme)
3) Key Characteristics
4) Designs
5) Potential
6) Strength
7) Weaknesses
8) Special highlights
1) Purpose: Firstly the much of this part is written in the introductory and there isn’t much to cover here.
2) Features: Besides their huge selection of products in of 42 categories, the Amazon.com site offers consumers many other opportunities to enhance their shopping experience example will be downloading free MP3s to watching streaming video to using your Digital Locker.
3) Key Characteristics: Its B2B sells first hand items including delivery to the specific address that you wanted. The auction function is a C2C model where registered users could sell their items which they had bought previously from Amazon to other consumers.
4) Designs: Now we shall take a look that the design of the site. This includes layout, color schemes used and also navigation.
· It has an appealing and smoothing color. The background is white and the texts are either black or blue which the contrast of the words can be brought out clearly not causing stress on the eyes when reading. Some of the tabs are blue or yellow in color. This combination of colors together with white does makes a very smoothing effect on users.
· The colors that are used are nice and vary from category to category.
· The color theme is also consistent and hence not confusing when browsing through.
· There are sections to help box up different kinds of products that comes together with promotions.
· Same kinds of products are also displayed together as a cluster which make it very organized this enhances relevance when browsing through the site.
· The navigation through the site is also very simple and cognitive especially during the search or items that the users might want and the paying system.
· It is also very easy to go back to the previous categories that users have visited or to the home page.
5) Potential:
· We see a great potential in Amazon as it accepts a wide range of payment mode (American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, Eurocard, Visa, Visa Check Cards, Amazon.com gift certificates, Amazon Credit Account, Webcertificates, and checks, money orders, traveler's checks, or cashier's checks denominated in U.S. dollars and drawn on a U.S. bank.) The above cards that are mention are common credit cards that most users will carry.
· With a constant update on the site users with new items or more promotions or even new functions, users that visit the site will never be bored or see old advertisements. This will keep the user interest and will keep coming back to see the latest updates and promotion that they can take advantage of.
6) Strength:
· Discussion Boards – This is where you post topics and chat with other Amazon reviewers and customers. There are guidelines to adhere to before you can post on the discussion boards. There are threads for frequently asked questions and bug reports. The boards are divided into sections for general, products and reviewing. The time is listed on the left side with the number of postings and which member started the thread. Many discuss their rankings as reviewers. You have the option of changing the color and size of the font in your posting. You get to preview your posting and can attach a file to it as well. This provides a good place for existing customers to exchange views on certain products and services provided to them.
· Help – This is divided into several sections – privacy & security, returns & replacements, ordering, shipping & delivery, selling, services and vendor guides. Everything is here but a live-chat option or their phone number. While in the help section user can also check whether the page is of helped or not and then get more options to fix the problem that you are experiencing.
· Shopping Cart – Amazon keep items here for a long time! I just found two books that I had placed there back on October 18, 2004 and they are sitting in my shopping cart. There are buttons to delete them or to move to cart. Basically they are saved items – to buy later, as the site states. In fact my last order was in April of 2005 and these items were not included in that order.
· Full refund within thirty days and exchanging incorrect and broken items based on terms and conditions is being practice which gives confidence to consumers who are skeptical about products before being delivered.
· Amazon has worked to protect the security of customers’ information during transmission by using a system called, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information after being entered.
· Only the last five digits of your credit card numbers are reveled when confirming an order. Of course, Amazon will transmit the entire credit card number to the appropriate credit card company during order processing to avoid errors during billing.
7) Weaknesses:
· When traffic is heavy it will tend to lag
· Shipping: Through forums and opinions of others who use the service of Amazon some commented that they encounter problems with receiving the shipment on time. Some however said that the items were sent to their address instead of somewhere else where they had specifically wrote and several phone calls had to be made to rectify the problem or the item had to be sent back to Amazon and then to the rightful place, which incurred shipping cost.
· International Shipping: There are items which could not be shipped to certain locations, due to weight limit. For example the track mill can only be delivered to specific states only. Another example is that books that are ordered cannot exceed the certain weight. Yet another one is the grocery products due to its freshness. This poses problem to consumers who sincerely want to acquire certain products that are available on Amazon website.
· We found that though Amazon is very informative and pictures are also there to enhance the marketing of the product, it tends to be too wordy on the front page.
8) Special highlights:
· Wish List – This is available in either a normal view or compacted view. The listing shows the date each item was added, the title, author if applicable, current price, new and used prices, link to the cart, how fast it will ship, whether it has been released (books). There is also a priority system that allows users to rate from 1-5 on the items that are on the wish list. This would be beneficial if users are sending their wish list to friends for holiday ideas, etc. The listing is 1- must have, 2 – love to have, 3 – like to have, 4 – I’m thinking about it or 5 – Don’t buy this for me. Customers can have more than one wish list. There is also an option to delete items from a wish list or to move them to another list. I have at times added an item to my wish list to find out that it had been there already. This will not show up a second time, but a notice saying it was already there. I wish there was an option to delete more than one item on a page of the wish list, but it goes quickly just the same.
· Friends and Favorites – Registered users can choose to add other customers of Amazon.com to be friends or favorites. A favorite would be those that you enjoy reading and want to be notified when they write a new review. A friend is someone who has access to your wish list and can send you items. If they make you a friend in return you can view their list and order them a gift for their birthday.
· Search Inside!™ Program – This function is application when customers purchase a book. It allows users to browse the first 30 pages or so that they have chose. This is a very useful as consumers can then make a better decision if they want to purchase the book or not.
Amazon was one of the first major companies to sell goods over the internet and was one of the iconic stocks of the late 1990s dot-com bubble. After the bubble burst, Amazon faced skepticism about its business model, but it made its first annual profit in 2003. It has also an international website where users from all over the world will be able to purchase. The countries covered included Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and China.
Founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, and launched in 1995, Amazon.com began as an online bookstore and it soon diversified its product lines, adding VHs, DVDs, music CDs, MP3s,computer softwares, video games, electronics, apparel, furnitures, food, toys, etc
Amazon.com also does provide an area where the users will be able to sell their items back to Amazon that was previously bought from Amazon. Basically it is a Business to Consumer and a Consumer to Consumer type of model.
To further elaborate the site, we will be covering the topics as follows:
1) Purposes
2) Features (e.g. business model, payment scheme)
3) Key Characteristics
4) Designs
5) Potential
6) Strength
7) Weaknesses
8) Special highlights
1) Purpose: Firstly the much of this part is written in the introductory and there isn’t much to cover here.
2) Features: Besides their huge selection of products in of 42 categories, the Amazon.com site offers consumers many other opportunities to enhance their shopping experience example will be downloading free MP3s to watching streaming video to using your Digital Locker.
3) Key Characteristics: Its B2B sells first hand items including delivery to the specific address that you wanted. The auction function is a C2C model where registered users could sell their items which they had bought previously from Amazon to other consumers.
4) Designs: Now we shall take a look that the design of the site. This includes layout, color schemes used and also navigation.
· It has an appealing and smoothing color. The background is white and the texts are either black or blue which the contrast of the words can be brought out clearly not causing stress on the eyes when reading. Some of the tabs are blue or yellow in color. This combination of colors together with white does makes a very smoothing effect on users.
· The colors that are used are nice and vary from category to category.
· The color theme is also consistent and hence not confusing when browsing through.
· There are sections to help box up different kinds of products that comes together with promotions.
· Same kinds of products are also displayed together as a cluster which make it very organized this enhances relevance when browsing through the site.
· The navigation through the site is also very simple and cognitive especially during the search or items that the users might want and the paying system.
· It is also very easy to go back to the previous categories that users have visited or to the home page.
5) Potential:
· We see a great potential in Amazon as it accepts a wide range of payment mode (American Express, Diners Club, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, Eurocard, Visa, Visa Check Cards, Amazon.com gift certificates, Amazon Credit Account, Webcertificates, and checks, money orders, traveler's checks, or cashier's checks denominated in U.S. dollars and drawn on a U.S. bank.) The above cards that are mention are common credit cards that most users will carry.
· With a constant update on the site users with new items or more promotions or even new functions, users that visit the site will never be bored or see old advertisements. This will keep the user interest and will keep coming back to see the latest updates and promotion that they can take advantage of.
6) Strength:
· Discussion Boards – This is where you post topics and chat with other Amazon reviewers and customers. There are guidelines to adhere to before you can post on the discussion boards. There are threads for frequently asked questions and bug reports. The boards are divided into sections for general, products and reviewing. The time is listed on the left side with the number of postings and which member started the thread. Many discuss their rankings as reviewers. You have the option of changing the color and size of the font in your posting. You get to preview your posting and can attach a file to it as well. This provides a good place for existing customers to exchange views on certain products and services provided to them.
· Help – This is divided into several sections – privacy & security, returns & replacements, ordering, shipping & delivery, selling, services and vendor guides. Everything is here but a live-chat option or their phone number. While in the help section user can also check whether the page is of helped or not and then get more options to fix the problem that you are experiencing.
· Shopping Cart – Amazon keep items here for a long time! I just found two books that I had placed there back on October 18, 2004 and they are sitting in my shopping cart. There are buttons to delete them or to move to cart. Basically they are saved items – to buy later, as the site states. In fact my last order was in April of 2005 and these items were not included in that order.
· Full refund within thirty days and exchanging incorrect and broken items based on terms and conditions is being practice which gives confidence to consumers who are skeptical about products before being delivered.
· Amazon has worked to protect the security of customers’ information during transmission by using a system called, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) software, which encrypts information after being entered.
· Only the last five digits of your credit card numbers are reveled when confirming an order. Of course, Amazon will transmit the entire credit card number to the appropriate credit card company during order processing to avoid errors during billing.
7) Weaknesses:
· When traffic is heavy it will tend to lag
· Shipping: Through forums and opinions of others who use the service of Amazon some commented that they encounter problems with receiving the shipment on time. Some however said that the items were sent to their address instead of somewhere else where they had specifically wrote and several phone calls had to be made to rectify the problem or the item had to be sent back to Amazon and then to the rightful place, which incurred shipping cost.
· International Shipping: There are items which could not be shipped to certain locations, due to weight limit. For example the track mill can only be delivered to specific states only. Another example is that books that are ordered cannot exceed the certain weight. Yet another one is the grocery products due to its freshness. This poses problem to consumers who sincerely want to acquire certain products that are available on Amazon website.
· We found that though Amazon is very informative and pictures are also there to enhance the marketing of the product, it tends to be too wordy on the front page.
8) Special highlights:
· Wish List – This is available in either a normal view or compacted view. The listing shows the date each item was added, the title, author if applicable, current price, new and used prices, link to the cart, how fast it will ship, whether it has been released (books). There is also a priority system that allows users to rate from 1-5 on the items that are on the wish list. This would be beneficial if users are sending their wish list to friends for holiday ideas, etc. The listing is 1- must have, 2 – love to have, 3 – like to have, 4 – I’m thinking about it or 5 – Don’t buy this for me. Customers can have more than one wish list. There is also an option to delete items from a wish list or to move them to another list. I have at times added an item to my wish list to find out that it had been there already. This will not show up a second time, but a notice saying it was already there. I wish there was an option to delete more than one item on a page of the wish list, but it goes quickly just the same.
· Friends and Favorites – Registered users can choose to add other customers of Amazon.com to be friends or favorites. A favorite would be those that you enjoy reading and want to be notified when they write a new review. A friend is someone who has access to your wish list and can send you items. If they make you a friend in return you can view their list and order them a gift for their birthday.
· Search Inside!™ Program – This function is application when customers purchase a book. It allows users to browse the first 30 pages or so that they have chose. This is a very useful as consumers can then make a better decision if they want to purchase the book or not.
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