Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > August > 02 > Entry
Woot! — there it is
Cute kittens and fuzzy chicks charm me easily, sure, but when was the last time you got all warm and fuzzy about a site that sells stuff online?
I’m late to the party in finding the Web site Woot!, but even a cursory look reveals that this is no average e-commerce Web site. The Dallas-based company sells one item a day on its site. One item. That’s it. Today it’s a “Razor Copperhead” videogaming mouse. Yesterday it might have been a Bluetooth headset or a DVD recorder.
Maybe you’ll see it as crass marketing, but the site’s attitude — including openly mocking some of the products it sells and referring to the first buyer of each product as “First sucker”— is a refreshing change from every other e-commerce site in the world, which all seem to have carry the same heavy-breathing Pottern Barn catalog style of writing.
Woot! has podcasts, silly songs, an entertaining blog and an easy way for users to comment on the products for sale. (You won’t see messages deleted when potentially customers rip into a less-than-reliable product.) The site’s only been around a year, but already it’s cultivated a good-sized community who seem to appreciate the site’s sharp writing and (we’d hope, profitable) wit.
There are some lessons to be learned here about engaging e-commerce and knowing your audience, but I’ll leave it to the Dells and Amazons to figure it out for themselves.
Permalink | | Categories: Gadgets, Internet, Shopping
