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E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

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Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#151

Post by nostrebored »

YCode wrote: post #120
sidlls wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free shipping for what delivery time frame? Amazon Prime's fees are quite small compared to direct shipping costs with carriers. It depends on the product type, of course, but typically third-party sellers are already on thin margins selling on Amazon. It's very likely that "drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping" means they're selling to you at a loss.

I'm not generally in a rush; if they can get it here in a week or two that's fine as long as they tell me what day it'll be here. I'm not saying it's a great deal for the company, but what can you expect consumers to do if Amazon has the cheapest price AND prime shipping you already paid for? That said some companies at least raise their prices on purpose when posting to Amazon in order to meet their standards for th…

You say this like it's somehow a bad thing? Amazon has built an extremely efficient distribution network comprised of all major shipping companies and a vast array of third party sellers. The price you're seeing is the result of billions of dollars of investment paying off.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#152

Post by mseebach »

dingaling wrote: post #140
mseebach wrote: post #133

The space (from my online shopping experience) seems to be divided between Amazon (with one click checkout, fast delivery etc) and everyone else (42 click checkout and one week delivery, if you're lucky). If the one-click patent was a major inhibitor of competition, I'd basically expect to see a lot of two-click check out options. Instead I find myself creating a million redundant user accounts, telling people that m…

> and everyone else (42 click checkout and one week delivery, if you're lucky) Certianly in the UK the friction of buying from "non-Amazon" websites exists ( create an account, enter payment etc ) but Amazon just uses the same delivery networks as everyone else. In fact a small company often dispatches faster in my experience than Amazon; for non-Prime at least they've been stretching the 'Dispatching Soon' timelines…

The issues I've had (in the UK, indeed) has not been with the delivery time itself (which is often stated, correctly, as "next day" or "2-3 days") but with the time to process my order, some times taking several days. Most severely, two months, as they had neglected to account for the time it takes to customs process a container from China. But the items did arrive one week (plus two months) after the order was placed.

But yes, a lot of small vendors do ship very quickly. They do still generally require me to create an account and unsubscribe from their newsletter, regardless of unticking the box during signup.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#154

Post by pnathan »

elboru wrote: post #33
tyrw wrote: post #6

I ran an ecommerce company for about a year, and one click checkout was the least of our concerns when it came to Amazon. The speed of delivery, prime benefits, brand recognition, and willingness to lose money on many if not most items are absolutely brutal to compete against. I'm glad one click checkout will be more broadly available, but it's probably not going to make much of a difference...

I love paper books, I love seeing them in my shelf, but since I bought a Kindle I just stopped buying paper books. It is just too easy to buy a kindle book with one click. The process goes like this, someone recommends a book in HN, they provide an Amazon link, I read a couple of reviews, at this point I'm convinced about buying the book or not, or even if I'm not totally convinced, the price, and the easiness of jus…

I buy paper for books that I think are likely to be worth reading years down the road, long after Amazon has collapsed.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#155

Post by sidlls »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #104
sidlls wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free shipping for what delivery time frame? Amazon Prime's fees are quite small compared to direct shipping costs with carriers. It depends on the product type, of course, but typically third-party sellers are already on thin margins selling on Amazon. It's very likely that "drop a few bucks off the Amazon price and offer free shipping" means they're selling to you at a loss.

thin profit margins on amazon is not the same as costs of doing business on amazon. Amazon takes a hefty cut.

Amazon's cut all in (shipping, listing, stocking, etc.) is often on par with the shipping cost for the slowest option with carriers.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#156

Post by nocman »

abpavel wrote: post #146
jaymzcampbell wrote: post #5

Setting aside the madness that is the patent itself ever being granted, what I found most interesting on that post was that this could now (possibly) become an actual web standard in the future: > the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started writing a draft proposal for one click buying methods. The W3C site itself has a number of web payment related proposals in progress[1]. The Payment Request API, in particular…

> madness Why shouldn't something be patentable, just because it's easy to replicate?

Because if an "invention" is obvious it isn't patentable ( http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/103.html ), and many many people see this as being far too obvious to be patentable.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#157

Post by twothamendment »

novaleaf wrote: post #136

anecdote: I use Amazon for practically all of my shopping, only supplementing it by going to a brick-and-mortar for food. I have never used the "buy now" feature, so honestly I think it's impact is a bit overblown. Here are my reasons I never use it: 1) I do a lot of comparison shopping, so I like to review my orders before the final purchase. (in case I put something in my cart and then later added something better)…

Yes. I live an hour from big box stores so I know my UPS driver by name.

5) I use my cart as a queue of things to buy that I don't need "right now". I'll let things pile up in there until I do need something. I think it is a waste of fuel, boxes, etc. to place an order every day of the week instead of one box a week.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#158

Post by ipqk »

twothamendment wrote: post #143
freehunter wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, many more people actually do use 1-click. A tip: if you ever find yourself saying "why does a company have X feature/product, I don't use it, no one uses it!" you might be right on the first statement but you're almost certainly wrong on the second. It wouldn't be there if no one used it.

Of course - if nobody used it Amazon would remove the button. I doubt that adding 1-click to some other site will greatly increase their sales - that is all I'm saying.

Well, you would be wrong.

Every step between a customer and completing an order is a loss of sales.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#159

Post by jimm »

nocman wrote: post #156
abpavel wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> madness Why shouldn't something be patentable, just because it's easy to replicate?

Because if an "invention" is obvious it isn't patentable ( http://www.bitlaw.com/source/35usc/103.html ), and many many people see this as being far too obvious to be patentable.

Additionally, the meaning of "obvious" is non-obvious. It means obvious to somebody with knowledge of the relevant field.

Re: E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

#160

Post by captn3m0 »

unkown-unknowns wrote: post #69
jaymzcampbell wrote: post #5

Setting aside the madness that is the patent itself ever being granted, what I found most interesting on that post was that this could now (possibly) become an actual web standard in the future: > the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has started writing a draft proposal for one click buying methods. The W3C site itself has a number of web payment related proposals in progress[1]. The Payment Request API, in particular…

Eons past, the HTTP status code 402 was reserved for future use; "Payment Required". Please to god W3C, take 402 and make it part of that standard! I so wish for us all to be able to respond 402 and have a simple standard way to charge.

This is what GNU Taler [0] does. You can send additional headers[1] to decide how the payment will be processed, such as X-Taler-Contract-Url and X-Taler-Offer-Url

[1]: https://docs.taler.net/merchant/frontend/python/html/tutoria...

[0]: https://taler.net/en/index.html

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