So today while my wife went to Roberts Arts and Crafts I went to one of my favorite bookstores that is right around the corner, Deseret Book in Provo Utah. While there, I was mostly just burning time because I knew that Sarah would be a while and that I could enjoy myself just browsing around the bookstore. So without any purpose or thought of buying anything I just moseyed around looking at stuff and thumbing through pages of a few books that caught my eye. Then finally, I decided to buy a book that I had thumbed through for a bit and ended up spending an un-planned $16.
When I got home I thought, why isn't the web like that? Why can't I just easily browse through it and stop on anything that "catches my eye?" With the web, I have to take an active approach to finding things - inputting a search term and hoping for the best. This is too much work. Imagine all the sales that never take place online because you can't just easily "browse" the web and buy an un-planned item.
Take this concept a bit further with the bookstore analogy. When I go to a bookstore, I would say that about 1/3rd of the time I know exactly what book I want to buy and I go straight to the computer kiosk where I can look up the book and find the reference to where it's located in the store. The other 2/3rds of the time I go into a bookstore, I have no specifics in mind, but I go and browse the sections that I'm interested in until I find something neat. Then I thumb through pages of several books until I find something I really like. That's when I purchase something unplanned.
In a sense, Google has perfected the "card catalog" for the web. But no website has made a good way for us to browse the web. And the exciting thing about the web is that it has a lot more stuff in it than just books, music and magazines! The day will come, and maybe this is my ticket to internet entrepreneurship, when a website (or an enhanced web browser) will allow a person to browse the web similar to browsing a bookstore.
Update: Since posting this, I found Google Directory. It is a good start, but nowhere near what it could be.
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3 comments:
Actually it's one thing I like about buying things online. I can get exactly what I want without wasting too much time browsing. It's scary to think how my kids might react to the possiblity of impulse buying on the web.
Many online stores have tried to create such an atomosphere such as amazon.com and overstock.com. They try to be the one stop shop so you can browse by category.
I like your idea of browsing. When I go shopping, browsing is my favorite thing to do. I would love to do that on the web.
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