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Amazon Business
51–57 of 57 posts
Re: Amazon Business
#52Everyone is going to focus on the discounts thing, but I think this is the real USP (over a standard account): > Create a single or multi-user business account, approve orders I've been in a lot of companies where they want to offload buying (e.g. office supplies, computer equipment) but don't have a dedicated department to oversee it, and don't really want to be handing out the company credit card to every employee…
This is awesome. > Create a single or multi-user business account, approve orders This alone is a killing point. If all the orders to the same company (location) are aggregated and shipped based on a predefined schedule (like every Monday). And with this, pantry can be filled with food that people actually want.
First world problems much?
Re: Amazon Business
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Crazy robots? Isn't Glacier just tape storage? Big companies use regular robots for that.
Amazon hasn't publicly stated what technology Glacier is based on. It's been speculated that instead of throwing out previous generation AWS hardware, they're simply repurposing then into cheap storage nodes for Glacier.
I can well imagine it started that way, but the density of tape over disk makes it seem likely to me that by now they're on custom versions of Spectra tape libraries, which pretty much fits into the "Try selling it, if it sells, make something cheap to run it" philosophy.
Re: Amazon Business
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, that stood out to me too. I feel like these were design proofs that someone just threw on the page instead of building them out. Possibly someone who doesn't do much web dev. Even the markup is odd: tables with 's between them for the image rows and each image link is using an image that spans the entire image instead of just using an anchor.
Amazon launched years before CSS2. If it ain't broke...
But it is broken, the menu is made of images, as is much of the copy. It's not friendly for search (not just search engines, but Cmd + F, etcetera.) – it's not accessible, and it's difficult to read. It is broken.
I even checked the URL to make sure it wasn't a phishing attempt. It's very lazy work from Amazon.
Re: Amazon Business
#55At bizongo.in, we are already building something similar to tackle the problems and inefficiencies in the Indian B2B industry. Currently in its beta, it has multi-user accounts, not only for the buyer, but also for a supplier. We've built a nifty quotation generator, to respond to quotation requests in minutes. This is where having multiple team members on the portal helps, as anyone in the team can respond to quotations. We are also building approval workflows, for both buyers and suppliers, where quotations can be approved, and further orders can be purchased.
Re: Amazon Business
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Basics purchases so far: mouse, bluetooth keyboard, capacitive stylus, travel case for a portable hard drive, HDMI cable, USB extension cable, USB hub. Here's the first page of results if I search Amazon for "amazonbasics": "portable power bank", USB--Lightning cable (6 feet) (I assume this is for connecting an iPhone to a USB port?), 67-inch monopod, bluetooth "audio receiver", travel case for small electronics,…
I'm not exactly a good data point because I hate buying things without a good reason and buy stuff as infrequently as possible. But I also keep good records of my purchases. On average every year despite being anti-consumerism* I will buy one set of rechargable batteries, one cable, one charger, one protective case, one adapter. (So far only one of my purchases have been from Basics.) 8 of 16 of the search results fi…
But at one cable a year, you're not even close to buying each cable product every year, nor to buying each product that you're a customer for every year. If I fit the model you describe ("the items in the catalog are items that a person will buy at least once a year"), I wouldn't be buying one cable a year -- I'd be replacing every one of my cables every year. Instead, I never replace them at all, making them items that I bought once.
If you want to say "the items in the catalog fall into categories, and a customer will typically buy a single item from any given category once a year"... then you've descended into meaninglessness. You can categorize fire pits however you want. They'll fit that definition some ways and they won't fit other ways.
Re: Amazon Business
#57Everyone is going to focus on the discounts thing, but I think this is the real USP (over a standard account): > Create a single or multi-user business account, approve orders I've been in a lot of companies where they want to offload buying (e.g. office supplies, computer equipment) but don't have a dedicated department to oversee it, and don't really want to be handing out the company credit card to every employee…
A multi-user business account is even bigger when you consider this is more than just the sale of physical products. It's also computing services via AWS, hiring remote workers via Mech Turk, and books+apps+other virtual goods via Kindle/App marketplace. Amazon just launched local services too, so this could let an authorised employee hire contractors under a managed, audited, workflow. (I don't know if all of those…
IAM has allowed AWS to just completely handle this problem, even with complex policy descriptions. So it isn't a new thing for AWS.