I received a funny email today from Amazon. The subject of the email was "Amazon.com: Work Gloves" and the body stated that "Customers who showed an interest in work gloves mike like to know about our bestsellers". Ok, I'll bite... (click open the email).
Wow, the products offered were definitely "interesting" -- highlights included "Mechanix Wear" gloves pictured with screwdriver in hand, "US Forge" welding gloves, and perhaps my favorite, "BladeX5" Classic Cut & Slash Resistant Gloves (with a Cut Resistant level of '5' no less). Impressive.
BladeX5 : Classic Cut & Slash Resistant Gloves
I have to confess, I had never before realized that there was such a thing as a "Cut Resistance Level". I will never look at work glove "candidates" quite the same again.
Now, with many things -- that might work very well. I know, from experience as a bookseller, that people who buy a book from the New York Times bestseller list are VERY likely to come in and buy more books from the New York Times bestseller list. I also suspect strongly that people shopping for baby gear are very interested in learning what the best sellers are.
So why am I not buying, you ask? Well, you see the "work gloves" that I had shown interest in (by adding them to my Amazon wish list) happened to be a pair of women's gardening gloves, size Medium, with a pretty purple floral pattern.
The problem was in the categorization. Although I can see that creating a category called "Work Gloves" makes sense from a "where do I put all these crazy, specialized gloves used for work?" perspective, it doesn't match the consumer's mental model of "where are all the things I need for my job?" or, in my case, "where are all the things that I need for my project?" perspective.
Oh, I know, with content tagging, they appear in those categories too, but for the bestseller email blasts, let me suggest -- if there are "housekeeping" categories that ease content management more than support consumer decisions, you might want to find a way exclude them from your "bestseller" email blasts -- but feel free to send along your top "home gardening" bestsellers and I will gladly take a peek.
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