Real-time view of Zappos purchases

Real-time view of Zappos purchases(zappos.com)

64 points by kennyroo 17 years ago | 17 comments

one of the better google maps mashups that i've seen

mrtron 17 years ago | |

Really?

I would say one of the most useless mashups I have seen. It is about as exciting as watching paint dry.

sgibat 17 years ago | |

Probably the best I've seen is the same idea applied to anonymous wikipedia edits: http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/ Not sure if this has been posted.

chaqke 17 years ago | |

check out the map on the right side of http://www.buzzillions.com/

real-time view of customer reviews at a couple hundred retailers.

ojbyrne 17 years ago | |

It doesn't handle zooming in and out very well - it should remap already displayed products - but, yes, pretty cool.

bigbang 17 years ago |

Its interesting to see that most of the customers seem to be women(or men buying for women). Might be worth taking a look to see some consumer buying choices.

ps: I only waited for few minutes though.

wallflower 17 years ago | |

It's hard to explain the appeal of Zappos, but one of my friends told me that she can buy ten pairs of shoes for an upcoming event, try them all on at home, keep the one or two she likes and return the rest. Basically, it's like online shopping mashed up with real window browsing.

brk 17 years ago | | |

That's basically why I use Zappos (although not quite to that extent).

Shoe shopping isn't really "fun", it's a utility exercise. The only reason you can't easily order shoes (or other apparel) online is because of the fit issue. A size X from 3 different manufacturers (or 3 styles from the same manufacturer) could vary enough to affect the fit.

So, I can go to Zappos, throw a few shoes I'm interested in into my cart and they're generally at my house the next day. Try them on, keep the ones I want, box the others up and drop the box off at the UPS store on my way to work.

Far less hassle than going to the mall, with a far wider selection and better prices. Not really sure what the downside is, if any.

immad 17 years ago | |

70% usage of Zappos is women.

axod 17 years ago | | |

Surely 70% of shoe sales in general are Women.

aptimpropriety 17 years ago | |

I've heard it's very valuable for shopping for shoes where sizing must be very precise, i.e. rock climbing shoes. Order the 3 sizes you usually dance around, and keep the one that fits you best.

jskopek 17 years ago |

The site seems to map purchases down to the individual address of the customer (you just have to zoom in a while to get there). As a potential zappos customer, I can't help but feel a little weirded out that my order information is so public. I can't really think of any real security violations (other then a really convoluted phishing app), but it'd be interesting to see if they can even legally report this data under their user agreement policy

immad 17 years ago | |

It probably isn't the actual address. GMap just doesn't allow you to put fuzzy points in, I have had difficulty with that before.

So if you did try to trace down that person you would be knocking on a random door asking about a shoe they don't own.

Luc 17 years ago | |

It may not be the actual address - I noticed a shoe purchased a few hundred miles off the coast of Africa in an area without islands (I zoomed in to check!).

andyking 17 years ago | | |

That's probably 0 degrees north, 0 degrees west, right on the Greenwich meridian and the equator, in the Gulf of Guinea. It's a spot that basically means "no data".

oomkiller 17 years ago |

This is pretty interesting, not as buggy as the other mashups I've seen that use Google Maps.