These companies innovate by showing off a layer of whiz-bang techy goodness so people don't notice that they've simply externalized all the responsibility and internalized all the profits.
At least Shopify is a real platform you can build stuff on.
Amazon is just this giant bullying machine. The Dalek of retail.
I have several issues with Amazon the company, but any time I buy something only from any other vendor I'm reminded of what makes Amazon different.
Fast OR cheap shipping. At least in my locality. In the place I most frequently order, free shipping is scheduled for "5-7 business days" to get to me, and frequently gets misdirected and takes an extra day or two (pushing it past another weekend).
When I've ordered to one of Canada's large urban centers it is much faster. But going to an actual store to get something for the same price is also an option, and faster still. And doesn't tend to have difficult to spot counterfeits.
Here, in Hungary, ordering from Amazon is problematic, because it's such a beast. No human in the loop, and they pass on your package to some delivery vendor anyway, which usually doesn't provide much tracking. So we get no* benefit of the machine at all.
* - sure, we get an interface that's at least consistent and usually available in English
Those are all things difficult to get consistently from a random web store.
Agreed. The problem is that generally the descriptions are so useless it's hard to know what's actually what. (For example recently I ordered a case for a Kobo Forma e-reader, and it was impossible to know how it would actually fold, because there were a few pictures, no video, no schematics, nothing. And the description was similarly unhelpful. It worked out okay though.)
> great customer service
I found it impossible to even get in touch with them :o (I wanted to ask where my package is, but they just kept naming the shipping vendor - "Deutsche Post", no tracking ID, no link, no actual contact to the relevant department.)
> saved credentials
Every webshop so far does it, and usually smaller ones provide ability to use PayPal.
> 5% back on purchases
How does that work? It's either priced into the price of everything or others pay for it, no?
They didn’t even shield a wirecutter , one of their largest affiliate referrers.