Borders’ new online storefront looks pretty good
After seven years of being tucked away amongst the immense online kingdom that is Amazon.com, Borders has launched its own online storefront that, it hopes, evokes “the feeling of browsing at a neighborhood bookstore, down to the popular shelves of staff picks that are familiar to its customers nationwide.”
The new website in my view is looking pretty good.
The smart move at the first is that it does not try to “out-Amazon Amazon at what they do,” as Borders CEO George Jones told the Associated Press. They do this by presenting a simple (read = easy on the eyes and brain), attractive, and familiar way to check out books and DVDs.
The best part is that you can browse through a large number of “shelves” – it’s called The Magic Shelf in fact – without leaving the homepage. This “one page template” will be popular, I’ll wager, a refreshing and fun experience as opposed to the sometimes endless maze you can blaze your way through while hunting around Amazon.
The design isn’t revolutionary – it kind of takes an iTunes store approach (and it rarely hurts to copy Apple when it comes to product design) – but it’s a nice wrinkle that allows for easy movement left-and-right, up-and-down through digital shelves. And what’s really great from a nerdy UI-perspective is that while you browse the shelves the left nav automatically notes your movement.
The idea then is that less is more. Instead of handing you four billion books and DVDs to have at (along with lawnmowers and clothing and who knows what else) Borders keeps it nice and simple with shelves called things like New Releases, Summer Reading, and Staff Picks. Getting an actual visual on the titles is also both familiar and refreshing. Further, clicking a “quick view” link allows you to get a digestible amount of information about titles without leaving the one-page template.
As a personal note, there have been half a dozen times over the last few years that I have been in a book store – usually a Borders or Barnes & Noble – that I have wanted to purchase a specific item but left the store unsatisfied. Either the store didn’t have it in stock or couldn’t find it. Sure, they were willing to order it and allow me to pick it up, but this to me is a fundamentally poor customer experience in an online age.
Why didn’t I just stay at home and dial up Amazon, I recall thinking.
The next step for the web is to simulate the best parts about our favorite real world stores, and Borders’ new website is an interesting experiment in this direction.
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