Amazon.com's Missed Opportunity

This seems so glaringly obvious, it’s almost stunning in its absence.

I bought a few books at Amazon.com recently and I noticed during the checkout process that they didn’t ask me to share my purchases with my social networks.

Am I missing something, or is it a no-brainer to offer your customers the opportunity to tell their friends on Twitter and Facebook about the books you just bought…or music…or movies…or anything else for that matter?

Those three media I just mentioned–books, music and movies–are things people are passionate about and they tend to express and share that passion online all the time. How about extending that to a tweet? It would help me share my enthusiasm for my purchases while helping Amazon.com increase sales.

But I was not given that opportunity on the purchase confirmation page.

You’ll notice in the screenshot below that I’ve got an Amazon Associates toolbar (I am a member of Amazon’s affiliate program, which allows me to earn some money from purchases that result from traffic that comes from links on my site.). Within that toolbar is an option to Tweet but as you can see below, the template Tweet Amazon provides for you does not include a link to any purchase.

Amazon.com's Huge Missed Opportunity

It seems to me Amazon is missing out big time on an easy opportunity to increase sales both from customer referrals as well as from Amazon Associate referrals. I would totally use a social media sharing tool that embedded my Associate code into a link that I could share on Twitter and Facebook.

Granted, I can do that now manually but why not make it easy for me?

The e-Strategy Academy covers all aspects of digital marketing including search optimization & marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, mobile marketing & public relations.

Categories