[eusto]

It's more about what the company considers core business and what not. Most often they don't see the website as being important enough to the business so they don't invest in it.

We have gotten used to almost flawless experiences from amazon shopping. Google search finds (or used to) results sometimes almost like magic, etc. The thing is, that's the core business. These companies invent new technologies and have huge teams because doing this is so hard.

Now take a random supermarket chain. Their knowledge is about physical stores. Their core business has taught them where to open a store and how to arrange things in it so that they maximize their sales in that environment. It's very hard and it takes a very long time to shift to an online model. You have to find people with the right competencies and the right leadership to convince the company to do this and this is actually very hard to do.

Look at the categories example. That, to me, screams backend database. The company has invested a lot of money into building business intelligence on top of their physical stores. That organization screams "perfectly curated data warehouse" and I imagine suggesting something like "we need to reorganize the way we store data" is going to be met with blank stares if not full on outrage.

[core-utility]

> almost flawless experiences from amazon shopping

In my opinion its too fuzzy, which is usually the opposite problem I have with website searches (e.g. searching a news site for keywords of an article I know exits, but it's taking me too literally)

If I search for "iPhone 14 Pro case", I don't want to see cases for iPhone 15 __, or non-pro models. I've (to my own fault) bought way too many of the wrong product because I search for a specific model and don't read the title before ordering, only to realize that Amazon didn't give me exactly what I typed in.

[theamk]

> flawless experiences from amazon shopping

what kind of stiff are you buying you call this "flawless"? In my experience the Amazon search is worst there is. Search for "AAA batteries" and it will offer you AA and even N ones. Why on earth would anyone want that?

They even got the basics wrong. The other day I was searching for power bank under $5. Instead, many listings was $10+. How hard is it to get this right?

Because of horrible search quality I actively avoid Amazon when I can.

[hunter2_]

> almost flawless experiences from amazon shopping

It's pretty good, but there are some longtime flaws that blow my mind, such as the order of results when sorting by price. It never makes sense to me.

[toast0]

I think order by price might be ordering by the lowest available price at time of index. This could be an out of date price if the index isn't updated when other pricing is updated. It almost certainly doesn't include shipping, as that can vary depending on where the item is and where you are so it can't be indexed. Filtering by seller doesn't change the sorting, in my experience, and I think neither does filtering by condition.

So, if someone is selling a used item in poor condition with maximum shipping, that product is going to sort as a low priced item.

At least, that's my reverse engineered understanding.