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Site Search Could Kill Amazon

mytotalretail.com

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Re: Site Search Could Kill Amazon

#3

Post by jcrawfordor »

While I think that they're overdramatizing the problem, perhaps Amazon should worry about this since I feel like the search is the only way to actually interact with Amazon. The quality of the metadata they use for browsing by category and filtering on features is so poor that any way of finding things on amazon besides search seems just unusable. I regularly "showroom" on other websites with better product browsing before searching for a specific product on Amazon to check their pricing.

Re: Site Search Could Kill Amazon

#4

Post by jrockway »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #3

While I think that they're overdramatizing the problem, perhaps Amazon should worry about this since I feel like the search is the only way to actually interact with Amazon. The quality of the metadata they use for browsing by category and filtering on features is so poor that any way of finding things on amazon besides search seems just unusable. I regularly "showroom" on other websites with better product browsing…

Yeah, me too actually. Especially when searching for things like PC parts, Newegg does way better (though PC Part Picker is even better). I feel bad not buying from the interface that worked best... but Newegg's order process is pretty evil, so I don't feel that bad. ("Pay $9 to have your order shipped possibly today, instead of waiting an unspecified amount of time." Do they still do that? I saw that once and never shopped there again.)

Re: Site Search Could Kill Amazon

#5

Post by tyingq »

Not better managing 3rd party sellers is what's going to kill Amazon. It's pretty common to see orders sit two weeks without shipping, or marked as "shipped" with no tracking number, or counterfeit items, items different than what's pictured/described, etc.

Banning the crap sellers would also make search easier. Less duplicate listings.

Re: Site Search Could Kill Amazon

#8

Post by gav »

jrockway wrote: post #4
jcrawfordor wrote: post #3

While I think that they're overdramatizing the problem, perhaps Amazon should worry about this since I feel like the search is the only way to actually interact with Amazon. The quality of the metadata they use for browsing by category and filtering on features is so poor that any way of finding things on amazon besides search seems just unusable. I regularly "showroom" on other websites with better product browsing…

Yeah, me too actually. Especially when searching for things like PC parts, Newegg does way better (though PC Part Picker is even better). I feel bad not buying from the interface that worked best... but Newegg's order process is pretty evil, so I don't feel that bad. ("Pay $9 to have your order shipped possibly today, instead of waiting an unspecified amount of time." Do they still do that? I saw that once and never…

I call this the "massive heterogeneous catalog" problem.

Generally e-commerce retailers have grown from a fairly narrow set of product categories (e.g. books for Amazon) to adding more and more diverse categories. This has a dramatic impact on site search quality.

If you consider a simple example, shoes. You only need a couple of facets to filter products to a reasonable set to browse through: gender and size. Now start adding accessories, athletic clothing, and so on, and the results end up getting harder to navigate with generic search terms like "shoe" giving less relevant results (not having the context of the user's intent hurts here).

I tried "shoe" on Amazon, got over 400,000 results with the first item being a shoehorn. It takes a bunch of clicks to deal with that.

This search problem gets worse as catalog sizes grow even bigger. Personalized results help a lot and Amazon seem to fail me with this, they don't do a good job bubbling up the products I buy to the top.

It's a hard problem to solve but it's not going to kill Amazon.

Re: Site Search Could Kill Amazon

#9

Post by dcole2929 »

The best way to currently search Amazon is through Google. But if we're being honest, how many sites can really say that ISN'T the case? Search is hard. It's a problem that a company with the resources of Amazon should have fixed but to say it's a potential killer is more than a bit overblown. All the subpar 3rd party sellers probably have a more significant impact on bottom line.

Re: Site Search Could Kill Amazon

#10

Post by FakeComments »

pandler wrote: post #7
FakeComments wrote: post #6

The first company to hit viral status with “centaur” shopping models will kill Amazon the way Amazon killed retail.

What are centaur shopping models?

I guess I as unclear — “centaur” by analogy with centaur chess, which is when you have an AI and human play together.

A company which faithfully executed an AI for me, eg looking at every pair of jeans and then using NLP or whatever on the reviews to rank them based on my shopping history and stated preferences, measurements, etc.

In many ways, sites are already stumbling in this direction: they do analyze purchases and so forth, but the level of granularity is poor and the control that the customer has over it is basically non-existent.

But whoever takes the (ironically Amazonian) approach of serving customers with AI (as opposed to using the same tech for marketing at them) is going to win, because they’ll have solved the discoverability problem — which plagues online shopping (and online things generally).

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