It often amazes me how staggeringly consistent Amazon is at getting things right. This amazes me even more considering my self-imagined technology curmudgeon status. I seem to have the same sort of unquestioning acceptance of Amazon as drooling Mac users have for OS X. A friend agrees that Amazon are "annoyingly good."
Whenever I find myself advising people or organisations about their web sites, I often end up drawing comparisons to Amazon. The target of a retail site like that isn't so different from a purely information-driven site. If you want readers to spend time and investigate what's there, you have to be clever about surfacing detail and making navigation as flat as possible. This is something Amazon excel at. They have the rare mix of being able to get you to exactly what you you're looking for quickly, while still being able to provide you with new things you've not seen before and interesting paths to explore when you've got more time.
Amazon also has an infectious self-confidence. While much of the commercial internet world is driven by trend, Amazon know where they're going and don't mind telling you. Their Associates programme is an example of this. They're perfectly happy to tell you the conversion rate they get from each advertising technique, but still let you choose which technique you want for your site. (Of course, this information is sometimes of wider consequence than merely retailing: I'm always happy to see the Amazon API REST/XML figures ahead of the SOAP ones!)
Despite the furore about the one-click patent, Amazon have had my custom in the UK consistently, almost from the start. Looking back in my order history, it seems the first book I bought was The Little Schemer, in November 1998. I've often discovered new authors or music from the "people who bought this also bought" feature. When money's involved, peer recommmendation seems to work pretty well.
Oh, and another thing. Amazon has always worked well with my Linux desktop setup. There are still far too many sites that don't let me spend my money because I don't run Internet Explorer. Amazon is evidence that there's just no excuse for this, and never has been.
Why am I saying all this? I guess I'm just amazed to find that there are one or two things on the internet that consistently don't suck. Amazon is one of them.
