The problem is that Facebook is a pain to navigate. If I wanted to shop for something online, the last place that I would go to would be Facebook - and even if I did choose to go to Facebook I wouldn't even know where to go or what to click on. A lot of those company pages have a spammy feel to them and when you like a brand they pollute your news feed.
The Facebook design has zero familiarity to it. I have been using the site for over 5 years now, at least once a week, and yet I have zero familiarity with the product. When I click on a link in Facebook, I have no idea what is really going to happen. I have written blog posts and popular guides on Facebook yet when I am helping others secure their accounts I find myself just clicking and guessing. It would definitely be in the top 5 products that I have used in the last 5 years yet it is the only popular product that I can't navigate blindly.
The menu's are starting to remind me of the toolbar hell of later Microsoft Office versions (a reason why a lot of power users are hesitant to upgrade Office).
I think Facebook really need to streamline their design, separate brands from real friends in the news feed and sit down and work out how they can expose deeper functionality of the platform to users without just throwing dozens of links into the interface. When you have personal pictures from friends mixed in with brand messages users are more likely to feel that their privacy is being violated.
Edit: to add, this is why I think Facebook isn't as secure in popularity as many analysts would have you believe. Pinterest is an example of a real threat to Facebook - a site that was designed with social and e-commerce ingrained in the product with an easy to use interface. That is a billion-dollar opportunity to Facebook is about to miss out on.
Your comment reminded me of when I used to work at Circuit City. One week, they decided to run a promotion: you would go to the Circuit City website, pick out and customize a computer. Then, you would print out a sheet with your order number on it, and go to the store to pay for it.
It was painfully obvious to me at the time that this was probably the brainchild of some young gun marketer at HQ. "Here's the deal," I imagine him saying. "People that shop at our on-line store don't go home with as many accessories and don't purchase extended warrantees as often as our in store customers. So, we'll make sure they have to go in the store. Then we can up-sell the crap out of them! It's flawless!"
Later on, I worked at the Apple Store. I once had a customer come in who was trying to decide between a MacBook and some low-end model of HP. I went through everything that she would get with the MacBook that she wouldn't get with the HP, and one after the other she informed me that she wasn't all that enticed by the difference. When we finished she told me, "I think I should get the HP."
"Yeah," I replied, "that's probably the right choice for you at this point. If you need another computer in the future, though, don't forget about us." The customer was stunned. She wanted to know why I wasn't pushing her toward the Mac. "Simple," I said, "we want you to buy an Apple because it's the best product for you, not because some pushy sales-person badgered you into a sale."
One of those companies is gone, one is the most valuable company in the world. Marketing on Facebook, to me, has always felt much more like Circuit City's strategy, and almost never like Apple's.
On the flip side, my last experience with the Apple Store and it's sales staff left me hating the entire experience. Suffice it to say, you can't walk and buy something knowing what you want. You are forced to wait for some sales person. More than a half hour into the experience, we simply left. My brother-in-law was sitting there, ready to buy. He knew exactly what he wanted. We left, and he never made the purchase.
So, when I read things like this, all I see is a sales person who just wasted another customers time. Sure, it's policies, and you are spending that time with a potential customer, and treating them well. The point, however, is I've had better experiences buying Apple products from places like FutureShop, where I can walk in, explain what I want, pay, and walk out in less than 5 minutes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure for the majority of people this is... fine (I guess). I mean, making an appointment to buy something is natural.
But yeah, I avoid the Apple store now. Between that, and numerous other things, it's at best a frustrating experience.
I had exactly the opposite experience last 2 times I was there - in one case a couple of years ago, I got an AppleTV... I straight-up said I was not interested in anything else, just that, I got a sales rep in about 2 minutes, then joked with him for another minute about how awesome Netflix on the aTV was. Paid, then I walked out without a bag or paper receipt.
More recently, with Apple's improved "self-checkout", I simply scanned the item on my iPhone app and pay with my AppleID. Again, no receipt, no bag.
I challenge you to find a more geek-friendly checkout mechanism. YMMV of course, but I've gotten really good mileage at my local Apple store.
The experience is different for things that are stocked on the shelf. Having to wait for a sales rep to be finished (regardless of other employees standing around) to purchase a computer is... well, described in my parent post.
For purchases like a new MacBook or iMac, I generally prefer to purchase them in-store, for a few reasons:
1) Save money on shipping
2) Get the item quicker
3) If there isn't someone in your household who is home during the day, having big/expensive things delivered to you is usually a huge pain in the ass.
Unfortunately, the Apple Stores (at least the ones I've been in) aren't really optimized for someone who knows exactly what they want and wants to get in and out as quickly as possible. Every time I've been in there to buy a computer, the experience has been really frustrating, as I have to wait forever for someone to help me, then they have to spend time tracking down someone who can go get the actual computer.
Obviously the model they use is working out incredibly well for them, I just wish they'd make it a little easier to actually buy stuff.
Not to take this thread further off-topic, but I'm curious why your brother-in-law and yourself don't just order from your computer instead of making a trip to the store?
He's Canadian. To make the purchase, he'd have to purchase from Apple.ca, where prices are much more expensive, not to mention the tax rate for Quebec (which I think is up to 18% now). Anyways, while visiting, we were going to pass by the store one day, and decided to make the stop.
Fair enough. However, it sounds like you overestimate the experience at other retailers. Waiting in checkout lines is also a bottleneck where one grabs the product off-the-shelf. Lines are typical in popular stores.
For example, a few days before Xmas I spilled beer on my keyboard and had to get a new one ASAP. I drove down to BestBuy, walked back to where all the keyboards were on display, and quickly scanned the shelves. I prefer wired to wireless for the desktop, and quickly found there were only 2 (out of ~15) wired models. They were gaming-oriented with all sorts of cruft, costing ~$80. I glanced around, noticed the Apple product area, walked over and found a simple Apple wired keyboard for $50 (I don't even own a Mac). I spent the next 20min in the checkout line, where the cashier tried to get me to signup for some program(s) of theirs. Not a pleasant experience either.
I don't think you mean that (or if you do, you aren't really trying). It's easy to imagine how the Apple Stores model breaks down. Just imagine a busy day, with a dozen people in before you waiting on sales reps who are all busy. A large number of these people have countless questions. Imagine if a sales rep spent just 15 minutes with each customer, answering questions.
Either way, whether you could imagine it or not, it happened. I'm not here to just bash Apple, either. The Apple Store is a different experience. But, it's not optimized for people that know what they want. If I want to buy an Apple product, I get better experience going to other stores. If I want to socialize and discuss how awesome Apple products are, then yeah, the Apple Store is a great place to go.
"Yeah," I replied, "that's probably the right choice for you at this point. If you need another computer in the future, though, don't forget about us." The customer was stunned. She wanted to know why I wasn't pushing her toward the Mac. "Simple," I said, "we want you to buy an Apple because it's the best product for you, not because some pushy sales-person badgered you into a sale."
I can say that in my experience this is true in Apple stores. The last MBP I bought I had to buy in store to get a certain discount. The sales person at the store actually went through my various usage scenarios to see if there was a cheaper option for my needs. Not often that happens in a sales scenario.
Want (the startup I work for) is just like Pinterest and we are allowing a community discover and share things that want or like. The difference is that we are solely products. We just rolled out a feature this week that auto-generates store fronts for merchants based upon things that community likes from that store.
I can imagine all the justifications you might have for triplicating the T, but it's not going to stick.
Consumers have demonstrated for a very long stretch of time their dislike of difficult variations of words. Is that two T's or four T's again?
www.wantt.com goes nowhere; and www.wantttt.com redirects to wantist.com. You've got a big problem right there.
I assume you guys are the ones out of Michigan holding the trademark on "want" - but if you're going to keep that name, you should go hustle digimedia and trade your soul to get want.com
Part of the reason that it has zero familiarity is that it changes so often that memorizing a "path" through Facebook to a place you like to go is totally pointless. In fact, the constant change is the whole point of Facebook. The default page when you log on is your news feed, so even when the site itself isn't changing, the content is.
The Facebook design has zero familiarity to it. I have been using the site for over 5 years now, at least once a week, and yet I have zero familiarity with the product. When I click on a link in Facebook, I have no idea what is really going to happen. I have written blog posts and popular guides on Facebook yet when I am helping others secure their accounts I find myself just clicking and guessing. It would definitely be in the top 5 products that I have used in the last 5 years yet it is the only popular product that I can't navigate blindly.
The menu's are starting to remind me of the toolbar hell of later Microsoft Office versions (a reason why a lot of power users are hesitant to upgrade Office).
I think Facebook really need to streamline their design, separate brands from real friends in the news feed and sit down and work out how they can expose deeper functionality of the platform to users without just throwing dozens of links into the interface. When you have personal pictures from friends mixed in with brand messages users are more likely to feel that their privacy is being violated.
Edit: to add, this is why I think Facebook isn't as secure in popularity as many analysts would have you believe. Pinterest is an example of a real threat to Facebook - a site that was designed with social and e-commerce ingrained in the product with an easy to use interface. That is a billion-dollar opportunity to Facebook is about to miss out on.
Edit 2: My attempt to shop on Facebook:
https://img.skitch.com/20120219-nd4peencu2b7kf9534juhb1ytc.j...
vs my attempt on Pinterest:
https://img.skitch.com/20120219-fjyq53h693eb4fnfitamgsmuc5.j...