The Amazon MP3 search experience

My colleague Michael Morgan did an interesting evaluation of the search experience on AmazonMP3 Beta, and I wanted to share his thoughts here because I think it's a very good overview of what works and what doesn't...

Overview

Some of the high points include DRM (Digital Right Management) Free music that can play on iTunes and Windows Media Player, a nice collage of fun facts (Top MP3 songs, Top Artists, and Artists Spotlights), and very inexpensive full albums and single tracks (.89 to .99, compared to iTunes costs of .99 to 1.29). As a comparison, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, a 26 track album costs $16.99 on iTunes but only $7.99 on AmazonMP3.

First Impressions of the Finding Experience

I really liked the Top MP3 and Top Artist Spotlights as I found this engaging and a place where I would come back to check who is in the Top 25 week to week. However, the music search experience is mediocre. The default sort is by relevance but I found the list of music arduous to comb through. After applying the ‘Best Selling’ sort, I had an easier time traversing the list as the songs that I knew (i.e., the popular ones) were at the top. The "sort by" setting does not stick from session to session so that is a bit annoying.

Albums are presented like all other merchandising is on Amazon, off to the side and on the left. After initial discoverability issues, I did find the albums as this was what I was originally looking for. There are not many reviews as the site is new but the music is very old so they could have easily used the CD reviews. I was initially unimpressed with Amazon’s search experience.

Final Thoughts

The Finding experience needs some work but I think the value and abundance of cheap DRM-free music is enough for me to come back and at least try it out. I don’t think there are any breakthrough experiences with respect to Finding, but there are other aspects that make this service compelling. Although I was not compelled to buy any music right away, I do think the new service as a few things going for it:

• Value. Songs are very inexpensive compared to iTunes DRM-Free tracks that sell for $1.29
• Abundance. Unlike the iTunes Store’s DRM-free tracks that only come from EMI, AmazonMP3 has secured 2 million DRM-free songs by more than 180,000 artists from over 20,000 major and independent labels
• Engagement. Publishing top 25 lists on songs and artists is very interesting.
• DRM. All songs are DRM-free, encoded at 256 kilobits per second, in comparison to iTunes' low bit rate, DRM saturated site.

eBay and its user experience adrenalin shot

This is an exciting time to be working in user experience at eBay. You will see some major changes across the site in the coming months, and we are all extremely excited about the UX improvements this will bring to the eBay experience. Over the past few quarters eBay has shown a renewed energy and focus on user experience and this permeates through all levels of the company. In the Q2 earnings call, CEO Meg Whitman made the following remarks:

As you have correctly pointed out, making improvements to the user experience is one of our main strategic priorities. Let me tell you about a few of them.

First is to improve the finding experience, what we call Finding 2.0. You can see that we have actually done some work in something we call DefMatch, which is a relevant and algorithmic search engine that, based on your prior searches on eBay and what we know about other people who search for those same items, can get you to the items that you’re looking for faster and better.

Finding is only one of the many improvements coming down the pipeline, but I wanted to point that one out because it reminded me of something I read in the abstract of a recent talk by Peter Morville:

At the crossroads of ubiquitous computing and the Internet, the user experience is out of control, and findability is the real story. Access changes the game. We can select our sources and choose our news. We can find who and what we need, when and where we want. Search is the new interface of culture and commerce. As society shifts from push to pull, findability shapes who we trust, how we learn, where we go, and what we buy.

That is why Finding is such a big deal for eBay and any online company. With so much information out there, helping users to find what they are looking for not only becomes more difficult, but users are also becoming more sophisticated, expecting Web sites to do their thinking for them. If they type in "Apple", they expect us to know if they want an iPod or a Macbook. It is our job to figure out how to make that happen.

Speaking of Peter Morville and eBay... the challenge of findability is even more difficult at eBay because we deal with so much user-generated content and non-catalog items. In Peter's words:

Last month I had lunch with user experience managers at eBay. We discussed the challenges of designing a marketplace in which buyers and sellers game the system. For example, sellers have learned to increase sales by misclassifying individual components as complete systems. They know that users who search for mountain bikes may also buy accessories they don't know they want or need. And, while the resulting clutter can be frustrating, hardcore buyers enjoy the thrill of the hunt that eBay affords. They don't want the search to be easy.

But these are great challenges, and I'll say again that it is an exciting time to work here -- there is so much good work happening all over the company, and all I can say is that August is going to be a great month. Oh, and feel free to head over to eBay Sneak Peak and check out what's coming...