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I like text as much as the next editor, but…
April 2, 2008

Amazon.com just launched TextBuyIt , a new text-message shopping service. Do people really do this?

Maybe I’m just showing my age — Virtual Merchant Today is becoming Virtual Merchant Yesterday — but given the phenomenal number of results I get from even quite specific Amazon searches, I cannot imagine wanting to wade through them two at a time (according to the Associated Press) on a screen the size of, at most, a business card. How much can the few hours before I get to a real computer possibly matter when the product is going to take at least a day to be delivered? 

I suppose there’s something to be said for “order it the second you think of it before you forget”, or for people who are going to be away from a computer (but near a snail-mail box) for long stretches at a time. And maybe the texting generation just prefers it.

But what I mostly want to find on a cell phone is real world, not online, products, because I’m out and about when I realize I need the info, and I want to use it right away. I want to know the nearest store that carries my brand of conditioner and has it in stock, or the nearest Thai restaurant that has a free table for two.

The trouble with that, is that vendors would have to keep their POS systems up to date and give search engines at least partial access to that data. And the people who are best at that, so far, are mostly online retailers, which is why every local shopping service I’ve tried quickly devolved into pretty much the same set of pure play online listings I could have gotten without one.

My advice to bricks-and-clicks merchants is to never mind the text-to-buy options for now, and instead, make sure to optimize your site so a search on your major product brands or categories and your city or zip code brings up your store, and your address, phone and hours are visible when your site is viewed on a Blackberry, Sidekick, or other mobile browser. Text-to-Buy may be tomorrow’s next big thing, but in the meantime, a much smaller investment may bring more traffic today. — Meredith Schwartz

Posted by Virtual Merchant Today on April 2, 2008 | Comments (0)