Purchasing books has been transformed a lot recently with the arrival of the iPad and Amazon Kindle devices. Browsing through books for purchase has never been simpler.
Unfortunately, browsing for books to buy on the web isn’t quite an elegant experience. Even Amazon‘s own site has felt stale for sometime without major upgrades or special treatment. Having to search for books the same way you would search for clothing or other items to buy on Amazon.com feels almost like it’s from 2001.
Even though books are going digital, people are still buying physical copies. I passed up on buying the digital version of the Steve Jobs book, as I wanted the physical version to hold in my hands.
Bookflavor pulls in books from Amazon’s site and displays them in an extremely attractive and simplistic way, and also shows way more book reviews than even Amazon.
It’s all in the presentation
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When you go to Bookflavor, you’re shown the top sellers on Amazon by default. You can also switch between that and the New York Times Best Sellers list.
The books are shown in a large thumbnail on a white background, and aren’t numbered. It’s a simplistic presentation that is reminiscent of how books a shown on the iPad and Kindle Fire. Clicking on the book will take you to its own page, with information pulled from Amazon and GoodReads. The information is shown on a similar white background in large font. The site itself even looks great on the iPad.
As you scroll down the book’s page, you’ll find reviews from both Amazon and GoodReads. This is something that Amazon should take notice of. Getting book reviews from all different services on the web is important. Having as much information and perspective on a book before buying it is nice to have. While Bookflavor only pulls in the two, I imagine that it would be simple for the developer to pull in even more services. That’s the only downside of the site.
If you’re still buying physical books from Amazon, you might want to skip the Amazon site until its time to checkout. Bookflavor has a link on its book pages directly to the Amazon page for purchasing, but your decision may already be made thanks to a recommendation from someone who never wrote it in to Amazon’s site.
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