Amazon: buy now was an immediate stand out. One click purchase definitely incentivized easily and quickly buying one thing. If you add to cart, it immediately starts recommending a huge variety of add-ons just vaguely under the same product category. Lowering time-to-purchase and increasing volume of purchases were clearly very important to Amazon. The vibe is that Amazon’s revenue from advertising purchases in their store has led to huge revenue gains, so they are primarily just trying to push thoughtless purchases of whatever products Amazon makes, or products that pay a bunch in advertising, and push these purchases in as great a volume as possible.
Warby Parker: main stand out was how many options there were around buying a frame (prescription vs non-prescription lenses, standard vs anti-fatigue lenses, etc). It seems like customization and personalization of the bought product is really focused on, likely because products are fairly expensive for what they are ($80 for plastic frames is insane), making each sale high margin but difficult to sell a customer on, meaning that the checkout likely serves as a tool to sell customers on the “value” of what they’re getting through customization.
Patagonia: checkout was definitely felt the most standard of the three. I just found an item that looked nice, added to bag, and was offered like 4 different ways to checkout. Whole process felt like it was mostly just trying to meet me where I was at: I choose what I want without pressure and pay in whatever way works best for me. While the products can be pretty expensive (so it pushes thoughtful checkout w/o rushing you) it also seems like some of the products aren’t super high margin (you’re getting a fairly good value) so it also doesn’t slow down checkout to insist on its quality.
