This just in: Amazon is buying Zappos!
For my non-US readers, you’re probably thinking, Zapp-who? But fellow Americans are fanatical about this shoe-selling site. And for good reason.
Back in the late-nineties, I spent a lot of time at Intel trying to figure out what would make this new-fangled e-commerce thing compelling. (You can find some useful published thinking on retail ecologies from colleagues in the first section of this paper.) We even patented a few interfaces to try and make the experience more visual and serendipitous and less mid-numbingly boring.
Simple in concept and execution, yet brilliant in experience, Zappos got the fundamental idea of filtered lists right. Basically, you narrow down an enormous selection of shoes by attributes like colour and heel height, displaying one hundred pairs at a time in a fast-loading list.
That’s right, you can browse thousands of 1.5 inch high, black, mary-janes in a matter of minutes. A hole in your heart without a pair of red ballet flats? Find them in seconds. Easy-to-save favourites, great brands, fast shipping and free returns make it constantly tempting to order a pair (or a dozen) to try out at no risk. For aficionados, an hour spent window shopping in Zappos is ten times more fun and satisfying than a trip to Nordstorm’s, no matter how good the customer service.
My ability to indulge is limited these days, due to exorbitant shipping costs to the UK, which is why I hope this is a merger made in heaven. Because Amazon has mastered borderless shopping. Another exceptionally simple idea, but so rarely executed, that means Amazon captures a much higher proportion of my dollar and pound than I would necessarily choose to give them.
