Mary Schmidt Marketing Troubleshooter

One of my biggest pet peeves with the “cookie cutter” marketing kits you can buy is that they’re just that - cookie cutter. Everything you do will turn out looking like “the other guy’s” - with no consideration of your company’s culture, your customer base, your delivery capabilities, your geographic location or your goals. (Sorry, “make more money” isn’t a specific goal. Just what kind of profit do you need/want to make? On what products or services? How will you reinvest in the business to stay competitive? Ditto “Get more customers.” What kind of customers? How will you keep them? And so on.)

When talking about web sites with potential clients, I frequently hear:

“We want one just like ________.”

“We really like these sites’ design. Let’s do that.” (Never mind that those sites are designed for entertainment or education and they need an e-commerce site.)

And so we come to Bryan Eisenberg’s recent post, Hidden Secrets of The Amazon Shopping Cart, in which he analyzes the evolution of Amazon’s shopping cart - and more importantly the business model behind that shopping cart. Amazon has very specific reasons for how they lay out the site and how the shopping cart works, right down to button size and placement.

Here’s the money quote (and why you should go read the whole post): “PLEASE NOTE: Just because Amazon does it, doesn’t mean you should. They make decisions based on their business needs, not yours.”

P.S. Amazon has also spent millions on their web strategy and implementation.

P.P.S. If you’ve got a “brick and mortar” store - you should also analyze your check-out process there too. More than once, I’ve abandoned my cart in a store because there was only one clerk - or they were busy in the back - or the credit card machines weren’t working…or…or…or…

Read More: All my emarketing posts

Tags: Amazon, Web Design, shopping carts, ecommerce, emarketing, marketing troubleshooting

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