Comments on: Click

By: src

src — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:27:53 +0000

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.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:56:28 +0000

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.

By: Morris Keesan

Morris Keesan — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:14:14 +0000

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.

By: Powers

Powers — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:49:29 +0000

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

By: furrykef

furrykef — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:53:15 +0000

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

By: Alexandra Erin

Alexandra Erin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:12:30 +0000

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

By: Alexandra Erin

Alexandra Erin — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:12:04 +0000

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?

By: Pinny

Pinny — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:26:41 +0000

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!”

By: Cidu Bill

Cidu Bill — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:36:28 +0000

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.

By: solarrhino

solarrhino — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:35:47 +0000

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.