Idea: Post questions on Amazon that span 2 or 3 products such as to help decide which product to buy 3.25.2016 (#90)

Purpose is to expand the question and answer feature so people can get answers about perhaps broader questions such as comparing products while keeping the focus on having a question be about at least one product. Posting a question starts from a product page as today but would also allow to tag additional products.

Start on the product page at the questions section. Tap to add a product then tap to “Add” Product 2 which changes the suggested questions to questions about Product 1 and Product 2. Then tap to write a question about Product 1, Product 2, and Product 5, then tap to “Ask” which notifies purchasers of Product 1 and/or Product 2, then tap to tag Product 5 so that purchasers of Product 5 get notified as well. Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

Press release:

• Purpose is to try the Amazon technique of a brief press release to try to focus on the benefit to the customer.

Title: Help comparison shopping on Amazon by asking/answering questions about/tagging two or three products to get answers from verified purchasers.

Feel you have so many options but aren’t sure what to do? Simply ask a question about 2 or 3 products, and we’ll ask people who have bought both or all three products to get their input. Sure, you could post a question about multiple products today and get answers, but this helps with reaching more people who may know. The goal is to build a resource that delights people whether it’s asking “Which of Phone 1 and Phone 2 is a better birthday gift?” or even broader to “What products are useful to bring on a camping trip such as Sleeping Bag 1 and Cooking Stove 1?”

Amazon today:

• Amazon has a question and answer feature. On mobile, the questions appear quite a ways below other content.
• Amazon features some questions and answers about a product, and provides a search bar to type in your search to try to find your particular question.
• Choosing to post a question then sends the question to people who have purchased the product before. Sometimes or perhaps many times the seller responds to questions and there is an annotation to indicate when the seller account replies.
• Amazon questions are generally focused on details of what the product does exactly. There are subjective questions, but may tend to be about a specific product.
• There are not really especially general questions such as “What would make a good birthday gift for someone who enjoys technology but also wants something that may be used daily?” There may be an opportunity with this as a result of the below idea.
• Or in the case of product comparisons, there are questions posted comparing other products that may be frequently compared, but there isn’t a way to easily notify the people who purchased that other product without posting a separate question to that other product. This is the primary focus of this idea to help people with specific comparison shopping.

Proposed idea:

1. Start on a product page. Scroll to the question and answer section, and note the default questions and answers that are shown.
2. Tap “& Add Product” then tap “Add” next to Product Name 2” because you are considering getting Product Name 2 instead and want to see questions related to that. Note that you see updated questions and answers about both Product Name 1 and Product Name 2.
3. Tap on the question bar and enter your own question about Product Name 1, Product Name 2, and Product Name 5. Note that this shows more questions that might be related but none that are the exact question about the 3 products.
4. Tap to ask your question. Note the text says that people who bought Product Name 1 and Product Name 2 were asked. This happened because you had selected Product Name 2 and Product Name 2 was mentioned in the question, so there’s confidence to automatically ask those purchases. Note that Product Name 5 purchasers were not asked, but has been identified as appearing to be mentioned in the question.
5. So tap to “Add” Product 5, then note that Product 5 purchasers have been added to the list of people who have been asked. If Product 5 had not appeared, then you could have tapped on the “& Add Product” button which would allow to type to input the product name and show product search results to add, with the default showing “Recently Viewed Products” in case those products were visited as part of comparison shopping for ease of selecting.

Comments:

• Opportunity is to help people get to purchasing decisions, including when at the point of trying to compare multiple products that are similar such as different shower covers, or even in comparing other attributes that make for quite different products being compared such as what makes for a nice surprise gift for the parents of a new baby.
• Question is about how many people could be identified who have expertise in multiple products. Perhaps the service could help direct people about what products to compare based on how many people have purchased multiple related products.
• Even people who have purchased the other product(s) mentioned could still provide their perspective such as if the person had considered these other products before making a purchase.
• Some reasons about why this may not be implemented:

1. A reason to not do more with questions could include that the focus may be on selling products.
2. A general reason to not do this is that having questions that span multiple products may make for complexity in different scenarios of how questions get organized.
3. Answering a question spanning multiple products could be confusing to people if questions aren’t assigned to the right products or aren’t clearly written, or if people answering don’t clearly identify which attributes are applied to which products.
4. A reason to not do this is that in concept you could just post the same question to multiple products that you are considering purchasing.

Designed by D.J. Sherrets.

© 2016 D.J. Sherrets