The Online Purchase Funnel Sucks
I’ve been spending most of the time off going back through my list of ideas I haven’t had time for. One of these was my dissatisfaction with the online purchase experience. It’s just so boring. I suppose it works, but having some half baked images on a scrolling site just seems lame compared to other experiences out there. I want to call out two big offenders, and then describe my solution.
Offender number one: Amazon
I was milling on buying a custom neon sign for my room. I decided to go to amazon to see what they had, and found they do have a customization flow! I decided to check it out and found this:
Amazon is a fortune 5 company. The best they can do is TEXT OVER A STATIC IMAGE??? It’s not even a nice image! It looks like a photo taken off a ipod nano from 2012. Don’t even get me started on the text. It just shocks me that this is the best consumer experience we get form one of the biggest companies in the world in 2022.
Offender 2: Truck Caps
This is a bit of an oddball. I was on the rabbit hole of van life, when I was curious about how much a truck cap for a hypothetical truck purchase might cost. I was greeted with this:
A form. That’s it. I don’t get to see it on a truck. I don’t get to shop the differences, or customize it to my liking. I get a form. The form is underrated in what it enabled as it turned the internet from read to read-write, but that was a long time ago. Now, I would expect more than just a form.
Sadly, this experience exists in many more places than just these. It’s just sad that the modern purchase experience is so boring. Stores obsess over the purchase experience when in a physical building, but online? Who cares I guess.
Solution
There has been a growing movement of custom shopping experiences I’ve noticed. They all boil down to 3d creation for larger sales products. Some examples include custom portable pools and entire van life experiences, and there are even smaller 3d tools that aren’t related to the purchase funnel like 3d knot tying tool or the 3d plant builder. My question is, why aren’t these incredible experiences hooked up to a purchase funnel? Why aren’t more businesses experimenting with this as a customization/sales tool. Does it not work? Too expensive? I decided to take some time to learn three js to see if I can build a quick demo for the truck cap company. The results are still early, but I’m excited none the less.