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Old Ideas with a Fresh Twist

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Old Ideas with a Fresh Twist

I am sure you have heard it before: successful businesses listen to their customers... or so they say. This applies to online businesses as well but, as I'll explain, online businesses may benefit from listening to offline customers as well.

I used to buy books at a bookstore called "Brains." Brains is on the other side of the town, a 15 minutes walk from my office. I used to buy there but several years ago I switched to online bookstores.

The other day, I walked by the store and realized that it was closed. I was shocked, there has been a bookstore there for as long as I can remember. A paper on the door explains that Brains is no more.

There are many reasons for a business to go belly up and I am not implying that every booklover in Namur has switched to Amazon and the like. Yet, for right or wrong, Amazon is the icon of e-commerce and its relationship to bookstores such as Brains provides an interesting tale of old ideas with a fresh twist.

The first online bookstore I ordered from was the WH Smith store on CompuServe, probably around 1995. At the time CompuServe was an online service popular with developers (now CompuServe is part of AOL).

I was thrilled when the first shipment arrived. I live in a French-speaking country and few bookstores carry English books -- those that do, carry mostly classic books for English lessons. I had to order English books at Brains. It was slow (up to 4 weeks) and costly (I had to pay shipping costs on top of the book price).

WH Smith online offered a faster and more convenient solution. Books were delivered within a week of ordering but I still had to pay shipping costs. Amazon would solve that problem by offering discounts.

Listening to Customers

Independent bookstores are facing extinction. They must fight for business against online shops, mail-order businesses and chains. Not to mention customers who turn to more interactive media such as CD-ROMs and TVs.

And yet a recent study shows that, for the first time in years, overall books sales have increased. The growth comes from online sales from the likes of Amazon, bn.com and fatbrain.com. Traditional bookstores and chains continue to decline.

What happened? Independent bookstore owners have been telling us for years that booklovers shop with them for increased convenience and the best advice. They were right but Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) made sure he would deliver both.

I am a booklover. I read and buy more than 60 books per year. I shop mainly online, in London during business trips and at local bookstores. Yet I like to take my time. I like to pretend it's just for the fun and bookstores are not really businesses. In that respect, Amazon is the most convenient store: I can browse as long and as often as I want. Also it opens at odd hours.

Furthermore it does a good job at recommending books, gives reviewer's recommendations and even lets me read comments from other booklovers. Simply put, although Amazon is not yet the ideal bookstore (I miss strolling the alleys), I think it beats most bricks-and-mortar hands down.

I know people who dislike online stores but most booklovers and occasional readers alike find Amazon a convenient place to buy books.

But What About Old Ideas?

The point I am trying to make is that bricks-and-mortar businesses know their customers well... even if they fail to satisfy them. Bookstore owners have known all along what book buyers wanted but they have been unable to deliver as effectively as Jeff Bezos.

When you design an e-commerce application, you should try to think like Jeff Bezos did. Too often, the e-commerce aspect of the corporation is separated from the traditional business and this is a serious waste of experience.

Don't waste the chance to learn from the traditional side of your business: those people have been in contact with customers for years and they know a thing or two about what really matters. If you operate a pure online business, meet your bricks-and-mortar sidekicks and learn from them.

As you go through this process, remember that you are dealing with different limitations than a bricks-and-mortar business. You want advice on goals (what you should offer to the customers), not necessarily on how to achieve these goals.

For example, bookstore owners stress the importance of giving good advices to shoppers, what was Bezos to do? A naive solution was to encourage shoppers to email for recommendations -- essentially duplicating the bricks-and-mortar shop assistant. A better solution was let readers review books -- something that would have been difficult in a traditional bookstore.

In conclusion, don't design your e-commerce solutions in the vacuum but leverage the customer experience of bricks-and-mortars and be prepared to think out of the box.

About Pineapplesoft Link

Pineapplesoft Link is a free email magazine. Each month, it discusses technologies, trends and facts of interest to web developers.

The information and design of this issue of Pineapplesoft Link are owned by Benoit Marchal and Pineapplesoft. Permission to copy or forward it is hereby granted provided it is prefaced with the words: "As appeared in Pineapplesoft Link - http://www.pineapplesoft.com."

Editor: Benoit Marchal
Publisher: Pineapplesoft www.psol.be

Acknowledgments: thanks to Sean McLoughlin MBA for helping me with this issue.

Back issues are available at http://www.psol.be/old/1/newsletter/.

Although the editor and the publisher have used reasonable endeavors to ensure accuracy of the contents, they assume no responsibility for any error or omission that may appear in the document.

Last update: July 2000.
© 2000, Benoît Marchal. All rights reserved.
Design, XSL coding & photo: PineappleSoft OnLine.