Making It Fast and Easy for Customers to Shop and Buy on Amazon.com Using Text Messages
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today launched Amazon TextBuyIt, a new service that lets customers use text messages to find and buy products sold on Amazon.com. With the addition of TextBuyIt to Amazon’s existing mobile offering, including its mobile site and mobile iPhone site, customers can now shop, compare prices, and buy from Amazon.com virtually anywhere they are, with any mobile device, using either text messages or their mobile device’s web browser.
“With today’s launch of TextBuyIt, any Amazon.com customer can now use any mobile device to shop and buy from Amazon.com, at anytime, anywhere they are,” said Howard Gefen, Director of Amazon Mobile Payments. “With TextBuyIt, if you’re walking out of a concert and want to buy a CD from the artist you just saw, or if you’re at dinner and a friend tells you about a great book you should read, all you have to do is get out your mobile device, send a text message to Amazon, reply to the response, confirm your order, and your item will be on its way. It’s incredibly simple and convenient.”
In less than a minute and using only text messages, Amazon.com customers can find the product they are looking for and complete a purchase using TextBuyIt. Simply send a text message to “AMAZON” (262966) with the name of the product, search term or a UPC or ISBN code, and, within seconds, Amazon replies with the product or products that match the search, along with prices. To buy an item, customers simply reply to the text message by entering the unique single digit number next to the item they want. Customers will then receive a short phone call from Amazon with the final details of their order and asking them to confirm or cancel the purchase.
When customers choose to purchase something for the first time using TextBuyIt, they will be asked for their e-mail address and shipping ZIP code they use for their Amazon.com account. With this information, Amazon uses customers’ default settings for payment method, shipping address and shipping speed, including 2-Day shipping for Amazon Prime members.
TextBuyIt is the latest in a series of mobile offerings for Amazon.com customers. For several months, Amazon.com has been adding more features and enhancing the functionality of its mobile website for customers who want to shop using the browser on their mobile phone. Today, the same Amazon.com shopping features customers enjoy from their PCs are available from their mobile devices, including 1-Click, Prime, Customer Reviews, Wish Lists, Search and stored payment and shipping options. These customers simply go to www.amazon.com using the browser on their mobile device where they are automatically redirected to a site optimized for mobile. Customers use the exact same login, payment, and shipping information as they do on the PC. In recent months, Amazon.com customers have used their mobile devices to purchase everything from books, to big screen HDTVs to $30,000 watches using Amazon’s mobile website.
Additionally, last fall Amazon.com released an experience customized for iPhone users. Just like with the Amazon.com experience optimized for mobile devices, when iPhone users type www.amazon.com into their browser, they will be taken to an interface that is optimized for the iPhone and where all the same shopping features they enjoy on their PC are available. The site is tailored to the iPhone’s screen size, keyboard, and browser capabilities and is designed to let customers find and buy what they are looking for quickly and easily.
