Very interesting! There has been a lot of hype over AJAX, and some developers are using it counter-productively.

One popular use of AJAX is to split up multi-page articles. While decreasing pageviews may enhance customer convenience it can come at the heavy price of less pageviews which results in lower CPM-based ad revenues.

This is a very good example of how the technology can be used to increase your profits rather than cut in to them.

Glad to see an endorsement to AJAX, rather than the fact that a percentage of browsers won't have it enabled.

We've recently developed a website that significantly decreases the amount of time to order a product using AJAX, as it was considered more important to provide an efficient method to purchase the product, rather than attempting to appeal to 100% of browsers (even though it works in every modern browser)

Did they ever establish the outcome of the fight between Amazon and Barnes and Noble over Amazon's 'patented' 1 Click system?

That demo is very compelling - it looks very clean and simple too for the user.

Talking about online conversions, Global Reviews rated Amazon's 1-click extremely well in terms of customer experience. I tend to agree, it's an extremely simple process. I notice that they've just launched a new blog looking at this type of stuff in Australia (http://www.globalreviews.com/adirblog/). It seems very new so I'm not sure if it will be maintained but seems interesting so far.

Thanks for the feedback.

It's a very clean and crisp interface and you'd imagine it would have a terrific effect.

Not sure about the Amazon v Barnes Noble stoush David.

Brendon

There is a lot of "meat" in this one subject. In general, online businesses seem to make it hard for a user to order, and I haven't seen much improvement in this for years. Brendon I recall a long time back you reported on how putting daily availability dates and prices on a hotel/resort site increase conversions. Have yet to go to a hotel site and seen that information available upon first view. It's as if they _want_ a user to have to drill down.

On this current example you touch on another technique I've tried to preach for years .. zip or postal code use. Folks, that code is not just a nuisance you have to get to satisfy postal authorities. It's a 4 to 6 digit shortcut that gets the customer's _correct_ address onto the order form much faster and saves the customer effort ... time is money (more orders per hour) and customer key strokes are _poison_ ... in addition to wasting time, each and every keystroke or new screen is directly responsible for a measurable quantity of customer abandonment's.

it's amazing to me the number of technical 'hoops' a business owner will go through to get a site to rank and yet ignore the simplest tool ... having the first thing a customer see a button or text that says 'click to buy ... NOW'.