I had a surprising experience this week. I failed to find one of the most popular books in the world in the world’s biggest bookstore.
It all started when my son picked up the first Harry Potter book and started reading it. He got into it and loved it. In the way of siblings, this inspired his sister to want to read it too. The problem was there was only one copy – so she would have to wait. I thought I would download the sample on my Kindle app on my iPad so she could read the first part of the book and find out if she would like to read the rest of it. This was the task that I failed to achieve.
I won’t go through all the steps I went through before I finally gave up. I got close. I found the simplified Chinese version and an Arabic version. When I told him the story, my CTO shed some light on why I failed. The reason I failed is that I live in New Zealand where the book is sold under its original name of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone where as in the US it is sold as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and I was on Amazon’s US site. Apparently the publisher didn’t think American children would want to read a book with philosopher in the title.
The reason I failed when I searched Amazon for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is that even though Amazon showed the Sorcerer’s Stone at the top it wasn’t what I was looking for and there were other results that had the image that I knew was on the cover of the book – they had a stronger information scent and so I skipped the top result. Unfortunately I quickly got to the Latin and Irish versions.
How could Amazon have done a better job?
I’m sure I’m not the first person to do this. Here are the things I think they should have done to made this better. These are things you should be doing with your site search as well.
1. Pay attention to their site search reports
When people search for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone there is probably a lower click through rate than ideal . This should have been flagged that this is a keyword they should pay some attention to. Note there will be many keywords that meet this criteria – it’s best to start with the most popular. I suspect Amazon were already doing this – they may have put in a rule to put the Sorcerer’s Stone at the top for this phrase.
2. Put a keyword triggered message in the search results
If they had a message on these search results saying “In the US the Philosopher’s Stone is published under the name of the Sorcerer’s Stone”, or something similar, maybe with an image of the cover from the Philosopher’s Stone then this would have immediately removed the problem for me.
For our customers this functionality is implemented through our banner functionality where you can have any HTML appear at various locations on the search results page, triggered by various rules. These are useful for promotions, or simply for improving the usability of the search results page – as is the case here.
3. Use a landing page
This is an alternative to the keyword triggered message, where instead of showing search results the searcher is redirected to a landing page that describes the situation and has links to buy the appropriate book. Maybe it could contain a link to the UK store, if someone really wanted the UK version.
4. Inform the user if you don’t have the product
This wasn’t the case here, but in the event that many people are searching for something that you just don’t have. Then put up a message saying – “we don’t have this, but here are some alternatives that we do have”. Or even more useful, “this is where you can find what you’re looking for”.
Amazon is held up as the gold standard for ecommerce sites. You expect the experience to be perfect. This example shows they still have a way to go.
It ends up that my son devoured the first Harry Potter within a day or so and he’s now onto the second. My daughter also devoured the first book and is now waiting for her brother to finish the next one. I expect this is going to continue for the next few weeks.
