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Brick No153: It's Usually Good To Copy The Big Guys
By Matt Weston, Thursday 16 June 2005 It's Usually Good To Copy The Big Guys I don't happen to agree with today's headline. It's not usually good to copy the big guys. Jakob Nielson (biog) - used the line to open his latest Alertbox column last Monday: Amazon No Longer The Role Model For E-Commerce Design. If you can't click the link above, I'll give you the gist: The column was about Amazon (a big guy, unquestionably). If Amazon.com doesn't do it, it probably doesn't work. At least that's the logic that most of us who have a website are taught. Jeff Bezos has probably pumped more good money into testing website usability and sales conversion rates than anyone else, after all. But Jakob has a new take! (A take I agree with.) "It's usually good to copy the big guys . . . [but] what's good for Amazon isn't good for normal sites." Amazon's design might work for Amazon, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to copy it for your site. An example: JN counted 259 links and buttons on one Amazon book page. Cluttered pages can work for Amazon. Its users are overwhelmingly long-term customers, who can likely screen out familiar white noise. Amazon gets away with it because first-time customers only make up a tiny percentage of its revenue nowadays. There's a much wider point to be made here. One that applies to any small business, website or no. Jakob Nielson says Amazon is no longer the role model for web design. And he's not joking. But isn't this just one example of a new order? Perhaps the point that really needs to be made is that the big guys are no longer the role models for us small guys, full stop. Copying Amazon, or any other big business, might seem like a good shortcut. But the problem is that what works for a big business often only works because it is a big business. (If I could, I'd italicise the word "because" there.) In other words, what makes a business big and what keeps it big are two separate things. No, what works better is to cut and paste ideas from the small guys on the up. Small businesses should build off each other's good ideas. Like (for me) the way Remarkable gives its products a personality - recycled pencils labelled "I Used To Be A Plastic Cup" . . . Or the way Gifty Collins' shop "It Will Grow Back" forces you to make an immediate, gut reaction - see Brick No131, "The Hot Or Not Rule". If you're looking for a role model, don't look at Amazon, Ikea or Amstrad. Instead look at the upstarts. Companies on the up - like Craigslist, Remarkable, and Omlet. Or, of course, any of the small guys on this list. Remember to sign up: back to top |
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