About the Second Edition
February 1999
When In Search of E-Commerce was first published in June 1998, Robert Seidman
and I had no idea if it would be successful or not. We had set out with the modest
goal of evaluating, from the ordinary customer's perspective, the buying process on
seven of the best e-commerce sites on the Internet. We were surprised to find
"showstopper" problems in nearly every case, despite the millions of dollars being
poured into each site. Still, at launch time, we weren’t sure if the report would have
an impact on e-commerce, or even sell well.
Eight months later, the report is still selling to companies worldwide. More
importantly, most of the seven sites have launched redesigns that fix many of the
obstacles identified in the first edition. Whether our report played a part in these
improvements, we can’t say. But we do know that these companies, after reading the
report, made many improvements that we had suggested:
- Dell decreased graphics and increased text, made the Dimension page more
readable, deleted the dancing Intel bunny, and made it easier to buy.
- Amazon made its search form more prominent, improved its search results, shrank
its logo, and simplified the server choice page.
- Barnes & Noble decreased the length of its product page, and made it easier to buy.
- Microsoft Expedia radically changed its home page, making it much easier to enter
the booking path.
- CDnow decreased graphics and increased text, and made it easier to buy.
This second edition of In Search of E-Commerce contains all the text of the original
edition, and it adds "Eight Months Later” sections for the five companies listed above
to show how they made improvements suggested in the report. Also new in this
edition is the executive summary, which compiles all of the "What to Learn From...”
bullet points from the end of each chapter. (This was the most frequent suggestion for
improvement from readers of the first edition.)
One final change concerns Good Reports itself. Originally a corporation co-founded
by Robert Seidman and myself, it is now the brand of no-hype industry reports fully
owned by Creative Good, Inc. With more Good Reports in the pipeline, and
consulting projects with top corporate clients, Creative Good is quickly growing to
become the leading customer experience firm in the Web industry. We couldn’t do it
without your support... so, thanks.
I hope you enjoy the second edition of In Search of E-Commerce.
Mark Hurst
mark@creativegood.com
P.S. To get the free Creative Good newsletter about customer experience online, e-mail update@goodexperience.com.
Next Section: Executive Summary