Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

Teleread notes that AT&T customers can now get Nokia Ovi Store App purchases billed automatically to their AT&T bill.

The Press Release mentions convenience -

Ovi Store by Nokia is now available to AT&T customers using the following Nokia devices – the Nokia E71x, Nokia Surge, Nokia Mural, Nokia 6650, Nokia 6555 or Nokia 6350 …

These AT&T customers will also be able to download free and paid content from Ovi Store with the convenience of charging their paid content purchases directly to their monthly AT&T bill.

This is a HUGE move and convenience is a rather small part of it. This post will discuss automatically billed purchases from a consumer psychology perspective.

Critical Aspects of the Purchase Process

There are several things that make a huge difference to how much purchasing customers do and how happy/content they are with it -

1. Context.
2. Site/Device taking the user naturally and quickly to the purchase point.
3. Ease of making the purchase.
4. The Invisibility i.e. Detaching the fact that you are paying actual money from the act of buying. 
5. Removing the threat of regret.

We’ll look at Nokia’s automatic billing addition, the iPhone’s App purchase process, and Kindle Store purchases.

Setting the Right Context

Consider the Internet -

1. You get a lot of things for free. 
2. Users tend to search for deals and coupons right before purchase.  
3. There’s lots of competition.
4. You can choose between 20 different places.
5. You have no idea of users’ economic circumstances.

You basically have a purchase context that’s far from ideal. Even before users can see what product you’re selling, what its utility is, etc. you have the odds against you.

There are obviously exceptions – search engine traffic is often traffic of good intent and sites like Amazon.com have a good purchase context.

Contrast the Internet Context with the iPhone App Store context -

1. Over 50% of apps are paid apps.  
2. Users have already bought an iPhone and are already paying for data and voice packages.
3. Users tend to be OK paying for things.
4. There is only one store. Users know where to buy.
5. There is only Apple – no competing app store.

eReaders and Cellphones provide amazingly good purchase context.

Taking the user naturally and quickly to the purchase point

Look at the iPhone and the Kindle -

1. In iTunes even the lists have ‘Buy with 1 click’ buttons.  
2. On the iPhone every App Detail page has exactly ONE button – to buy the app.  
3. On the Kindle every Kindle book detail page has the ‘Buy Now’ button highlighted by default.
4. On Amazon.com every Kindle book page has the 1-click button highlighted implicitly.

Shouldn’t it be the most natural thing to take users quickly and smoothly to where they can buy the product?

However, a lot of companies don’t get this -

1. WalMart has an Add to Cart button to the bottom right – almost placed as an afterthought.  

Ease of Making the Purchase

It’s ridiculously easy to make Kindle and iPhone purchases -

1. 1 click purchases with a confirmation dialog (that you can turn off) for iTunes. Log-in is also required. 
2. 1 click purchase with a log-in for the iPhone.  
3. 1 click purchases without a confirmation dialog for Amazon.com (log-in required) and Kindle.
4. On the Kindle you don’t even have to log-in.

Think about just how easy buying a book on the Kindle is - you have almost zero friction. The only thing easier would be it reading your mind.

In stark contrast is how you buy Android Apps -

1. Payments have to be made via Google Checkout.  
2. Payment information is not collected until the first time you purchase a paid app.
3. Users have to enter credit card details.

This article in Venture Beat discusses it and it’s particularly interesting to hear one possible solution -

 Hoogsteder thinks carrier billing, where Android app purchases show up on your phone bill instead of your credit card, will get people to start buying.

The automatic billing suggestion does a lot more than simply make buying easy.

Invisible Purchases – Detaching the fact that you are paying money from the purchase

This is where the effectiveness of Nokia and AT&T’s strategy becomes apparent.

We’ve gradually had various layers placed between buying something and paying for it -

1. First there were debit cards so that the physical act of giving money was made less painful.
2. Then there were credit cards so you didn’t even have to pay until later.  
3. After that we got 1 click purchases where all you have to do is log-in and click. Your receipt isn’t even shown to you – just sent to your email.  
4. The next big step is to dissociate the purchase and make it show up at the end of the month on your AT&T/phone bill.

The bigger the detachment from the concept of paying money the higher the chance customers make a purchase.

Making things so simple and smooth necessitates providing some way to undo purchases. 

Removing the Threat of Regret

A large portion of people’s reluctance to buy products stems from the fear of something bad happening and them regretting the purchase.

That leads to -

1. Return policies.
2. Warranties.
3. The presence of used product markets.

With Amazon you get a 30 day return period. You even get a 7 day return period for Kindle book purchases.

Return policies remove a lot of the perceived commercialism of making the purchase process easy -

1. Purchases are easy to help customers.
2. If customers buy things by mistake, or make the wrong purchase, they can return things.

eReaders, eBooks and the Purchase Process

While we’re seeing rapid progress on a lot of different fronts, eReader and eBook companies are still missing out some important aspects -

1. Sony didn’t add wireless downloads for a long time – It’s the equivalent of turning down money from customers.  
2. Nook’s short return period and 10% restocking fee make buying a Nook unnecessarily risky.  
3. None of the stores have a buying process as easy as Apple and Amazon’s 1 click buying.
4. The addition of a million free books spoils the context of the Sony and Nook eBook stores. To make things worse – Both of them have a lot more free books than paid books.

Customers are coming in with great intentions – it’s simply inexcusable to make things complicated and painful for them.

By making purchases extremely convenient and painless you walk the line between convenience and diabolical effectiveness – However, things like a good refund policy ensure you stay on the side that’s good for customers.