Comments on: Tip for Amazon Designers: Lots of Folks Don’t Know How to Exclude Gifts from Recommendations

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 23 May 2007 07:41:43 +0000

Of course that they need to give a tool to learn about recommendations. But do people really will use this tool?

By: » From Bokardo - Tip for Amazon Designers: Lots of Folks Don?t Know How to Exclude Gifts from Recommendations - My Web Design Blogs

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:58:02 +0000

[...] Amazon should make the ability to remove purchased items from recommendations much more apparent. Rashmi Sinha gave a great talk on Recommendation Systems at the UIE Web App Summit yesterday. I was like a kid in a candy store…it’s one of my favorite topics and Rashmi is a true expert on the topic. At one […] Read more… [...]

By: » From Bokardo - Tip for Amazon Designers: Make Recommendation Systems Controls More Apparent - My Web Design Blogs

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 20:56:31 +0000

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:15:24 +0000

Hey, thanks Mark…that’s awesome! I’m really happy that you enjoyed the talks!

And I agree about giving tools to learn about recommendations…Amazon is in this for the long haul…and their customers are incredibly loyal. I think that explaining how the process works will help with this problem as well.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 13:50:47 +0000

Great points, guys.

My design suggestion was to prevent a specific condition from happening: a gift item being included in my personal recommendations.

I was not referring to rating, nor was I suggesting that this was the only improvement that Amazon might make. Your suggestions are excellent for asking people to rate items they’ve bought for themselves. (and Andrew is absolutely right about looking to Netflix as a leader in that category…they know how to get ratings!)

I’ve amended the post to be more clear on that…

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 01:27:08 +0000

Rather than adding another form control on every item in your shopping cart or your recommendations, I would put a link near the recommendations that says something like “Tune your recommendations” where you can learn how the Amazon recommendation system works and what products make up your current sample pool. There you can put all the fancy widgets and controls you could possibly want.

And Rashmi’s talk (as well as Joshua’s of course ) was one of my favorites from the conference. I for sure will be giving it another listen when UIE posts the audio.

By: Eddie

Eddie — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 20:31:49 +0000

I like Josh’s solution- but I certainly see the points the others have made here. So with that in mind, how about a checkbox under any item recommended that lets you exclude it? You’re going to most be annoyed/motivated to do anything about it when you see “We choose this because you picked Abe Lincoln…” at that point, you should be able to check “exclude” and maybe a refresh based on the new information.

(I’m not sure if that’s how it works now or not)

By: pauric

pauric — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:50:50 +0000

Goog point Andrew, instead of automatically doing this they could enrich the experience by making this feature more of a conversation.

‘Here’s your receipt John Doe, hope you enjoy the purchase, do let us _know_ if you if you want similar books/video/cds.’

‘Welcome back, did you enjoy book/film/cd? yes/no’

I think this would reduce a certain level of apprehension I have about automated recommendation systems.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:45:55 +0000

I don’t think it’s appropriate to add it to the purchase process: it’s far too important to make that successful without introducing distractions.

I love the way Netflix encourages me to rate movies I order: in any email that mentions a movie I’ve ordered, received, or returned, there’s a possibility to rate it. Amazon already communicates with me multiple times about each product I buy: purchase confirmation, delivery notifications, and so on. Each of those is an opportunity to ask if I want to use the purchase in recommendations.

And I agree with the commenter above that in many cases, I don’t know if I *do* want this purchase to be considered until after I’ve received it. How about checking with me when I go back and *review* a product to see if I want to use it as a recommendation?

By: pauric

pauric — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:51:04 +0000

Ultimately, is this useful? How do you know you’ll like the product before it even arrives.

I would like them to wait for a week or two then ask me when I log in “Did you like product X, would you like us to provide similar recommendations?”