Click

Cidu Bill on Aug 27th 2008

click.jpg
I’m fine with this one other than Paige’s comment.

Filed in Amazon.com, Bill Amend, Bill Bickel, CIDU, Fox Trot, comic strips, comics, computers, humor | 12 responses so far

12 Responses to “Click”

  1. Arthur Aug 27th 2008 at 12:11 am 1

    There doesn’t seem to be any actual comic here to go with your comment about Paige’s comment.

  2. Keera Aug 27th 2008 at 12:32 am 2

    I’m with Paige on this one. All one-click shopping does is spare you the trouble of filling out shipping and payment info when you decide to check out. For the actual shopping experience, it’s still *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click* *click*…

  3. solarrhino Aug 27th 2008 at 12:35 am 3

    Let’s say Paige buys 50 things. Ignoring the clicks needed to find things to buy (because that’s the same whether the site uses 1-click or not), 1 click shopping takes 50 clicks.

    But even without the patent, Paige could buy the same 50 things with only 50 clicks (once to add each item to her “shopping cart”), and then “n” more clicks to check out. For an auto-logged-in registered user, “n” might be as small as 2 or 3. Over 50 items, that only gives 1-click a 6% advantage; and if Paige buys even more items per visit, then that advantage gets even smaller.

    Paige apparently buys a lot, and apparently thinks that everybody else does too. That’s why she doesn’t understand why Amazon bothered with 1-click.

    …

    Ehhh. I guess it’s funny… but only because it involves math.

  4. Cidu Bill Aug 27th 2008 at 12:36 am 4

    I can see it on my screen, Arthur, and apparently so can Keera. Isn’t the Internet fun? One of these days maybe they’ll get the bugs out.

    If you can’t see the comic, try clicking http://comicsidontunderstand.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/click.jpg directly.

  5. Pinny Aug 27th 2008 at 01:26 am 5

    I understand it as she is “one-click” buying something with each click. Her comment is along the lines of. “I don’t understand how someone can only make one click.” I.e., she’s addicted to the clicking/buying.

    It’s analogous to the commercial for some potato chip: “Bet you can’t eat only one!”

  6. Alexandra Erin Aug 27th 2008 at 02:12 am 6

    I’m with Pinny here. The advantage of one-click shopping, from Amazon’s point of view, is not that it takes fewer clicks to buy fifty items, but that each transaction is finalized much more quickly.

    Without the one-click system, you add fifty items to the shopping cart, see what your total is, and then drop forty of them. With the one-click system, you could buy fifty tracks for a fraction of a dollar without ever realizing how much you’re spending or realizing that you could be buying the whole album for cheaper than the tracks you’ve selected.

    The joke is in Paige’s obliviousness to how the system enables her spending sprees… but the joke falls on its face because of poor execution. She’s already facing Roger and looking at the credit card bill when she says her line.

    Imagine that it went like this: Paige clicks, says, “Huh, I don’t see what the big deal is about Amazon’s one-click system.”, then clicks some more, then the wall of click, with Roger’s speech balloon intruding into the frame.

    Slightly funnier?

  7. Alexandra Erin Aug 27th 2008 at 02:12 am 7

    Er, I meant to say I’m with solarrhino.

  8. furrykef Aug 27th 2008 at 05:53 am 8

    This is a stretch, but it could also be the case that Paige is actually just trying to buy one thing and the page isn’t loading, so she keeps clicking, thinking that clicking more times will help, when in fact it’s registering more purchases… which somehow immediately appear on Roger’s bill without waiting for it to arrive because the idea is funny.

    But yeah, Pinny’s explanation seems more likely… I don’t really buy (heh) solarrhino’s explanation, though, because that’s probably asking the reader to think too much about how shopping carts online actually work, and Bill Amend probably knows that.

    - Kef

  9. Powers Aug 27th 2008 at 06:49 am 9

    Pinny’s got it. Paige doesn’t understand the purpose of “one click shopping” because she never buys just one thing.

  10. Morris Keesan Aug 27th 2008 at 09:14 am 10

    I agree with Alexandra Erin’s analysis of why 1-click shopping is a big deal for Amazon.

    But my immediate response to reading the comic, and to Bill’s confusion, was that Paige’s comment is there so that the reader understands what she’s been doing. Otherwise her father’s comment wouldn’t make much sense.

  11. Richard Aug 27th 2008 at 10:56 am 11

    I thought the point was that Amazon had PATENTED one click shopping - meaning other on-line stores could not use Amazon’s one-click shopping method without Amazon’s permission (and probably paying a royalty) - and Paige wanted ALL on-line stores to be able to offer one click shopping.

  12. src Aug 27th 2008 at 02:27 pm 12

    I got a different read on this: One click shopping is supposed to make shopping fast - you go in, find it, click, done. Since Paige is buying half of e-bay, it’s not fast. Ergo, one-click shopping does nothing to help her out.

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