The importance of wish lists in online stores

Published on 18^th June 2009 in Websites, tagged Amazon, iTunes, Kayak, shopping, Threadless.

One interesting point I picked up from Paco Underhill’s book Why We Buy is that people don’t just buy goods online, but do research as well. We gather information about products we’re considering so that when we do go to a shop, we have a greater understanding of what we’re paying for before we hand over our hard-earned cash.

The same principle applies when we buy online. Whenever I buy something online, it’s rarely on the spur of the moment. I’ve almost always read about it somewhere else, listened to a sample or otherwise done some research before purchasing. However, once I’ve decided to buy, I don’t always purchase it straight away. This is where wish lists come in.

Wish lists provide a way of collecting items you’re interested in but haven’t decided to buy, or things that you will buy in the future. Books are a great example of this; you often know which ones you’d like, but it’s impractical to buy so many at once because of the cost and speed that you can read them.

For retailers like Amazon, there are plenty of benefits for offering wish lists. They provide customers with a convenient way of keeping track of items and one that is always within the context of their store. They also encourage repeat purchases, as people are giving themselves a reason to come back to buy again. Once you have an established list, you’re probably going to keep on adding to it and buying from it for the forseeable future.

Lists don’t always have to be private though. Amazon also allows users to share theirs and use them to let other people know what they’d like to have. This can be used for people you know, for Christmas and birthday lists, or for people you don’t. For instance, some open source software developers advertise their wish lists so that other people can reward them for their work in a way other than simply paying them.

Wish lists are best used in shops where there are a great number of items available. Choice can be overpowering and prevent people from making a decision, so providing a way of collecting likely purchases is essential. This is particularly true of higher value items like flights, cars and houses, where picking the right one is non-trivial.

Flight comparison website Kayak is a great example of this. It allows you to add flights to a temporary wish list by ‘remembering’ them while you’re searching, with no registration required to do so. With so many flights available and often very little difference between them, being able to create a list is essential.

Given the benefits and potential widespread use of wish lists, it’s surprising that they aren’t more websites using them. iTunes would benefit enormously from a proper implementation of them; at the moment you can create one, but it’s a little cumbersome and not an advertised feature. Threadless could also do with one now that the number of products they have for sale is much greater than it used to be.

Wish lists can be used in a variety of ways, from planning which books you’ll buy over the next few months to helping to filter out the best flights. Whatever type of shop they’re used in, they offer value to both retailers and customers. Wish lists can not only help people buy something right now, but also encourange repeat business over a long period of time. If you’re an online retailer, adding something which does both of those things should be a no-brainer.