I really like shopping from Amazon.ca in Canada – and I’d shop even more from them if they had more products. They’re getting better in Canada, adding some electronics, but by and large Amazon.ca is a pale reflection of Amazon.com. At any rate here are two ideas I wish Amazon would implement:
- Discount Alert: There are some books and movies that I want, but I’m not willing to pay the current price for them. Case in point: The Shield Season 7 is $49.99 right now. I recently purchased seasons two through five for $29.99, which is a great price. I was holding off on buying seasons six and seven until they dropped in price. I was checking on Amazon.ca for something else a few days ago, and decided to look up The Shield again – and wouldn’t you know, season six dropped in price by $20 and was $29.99. Why doesn’t Amazon have a way for me to flag a particular product, then notify me when that product is on sale? If a product I want to pay less for goes on sale for a few days, but I’m not told about it, Amazon is losing out on a sale. Further, if Amazon had 5000 people who flagged an item and were waiting for it to go on sale, they could go back to the manufacturer of that product and say “Hey, we have 5000 people who will probably buy this product if we can get the price down – what can you do for us?” That’s a powerful market waiting to happen.
- Softcover Alert: There are numerous books that I’m interested in reading, but not so much that I want to pay extra for the hardcover edition. The extra size and weight of hardcover books means I’ll only buy them if it’s a book that I’m really excited about reading (typically something by Terry Brooks). It’s easy to forget the name of a book you want to read, so I’d like to see Amazon.com allow customers to flag a hardcover book and be alerted when it’s available in softcover. This would be an easy way for Amazon to rack up some extra sales. Or they could go even further and allow the pre-order of the softcover book, months before it comes out. This would be much better than what I do now, which is add the book to my wish list with a note saying that I’m waiting for the softcover version. People don’t seem to read the notes, so I end up with a hardcover version…
- Series Alerts: More often than not, I’ll buy the first book in a series, read it, and forget about the next books in the series until many months later when they finally come out. It’s not that I don’t want to read the next book in the series, it’s that there’s no easy way for me to be notified about the new book in the series. If Amazon.com allowed me to flag a series and get alerted when a new book is released, or even pre-order the next book, it would simply show up at my door when it comes out. Again, easy sales for Amazon.com and a lot of convinience for me as a customer.
I especially like suggestion #1, Newegg has a similar feature. They could also use this data to help them better tailor your personalized gold box offers.
A feature I’d really like them to offer is an option to block third party sellers from showing up on my wish list. I’m not sure that is exactly what I want, but often I’ve noticed I could have an item on my list that Amazon goes out of stock on. A third party has it but at a hugely inflated price. I could see a family member ordering something for me off my gift list and essentially getting ripped off since they would not know what the normal price of the item was. I’m not against 3rd parties being able to charge whatever the like, but in the case above, it could be confusing.
Chris,
That’s a GREAT suggestion! I’d love to see that too…