Indigo Switches Shortcovers.com to Kobobooks.com. No Kobo eReader In Sight.
So it is just after midnight December 15, 09 and as expected the switch has been flipped on KoboBooks.com. Shortcovers.com is no more. Indigo CTO Micheal Serbinis explains in a blog post “Kobo is an anagram of the word “book” and we think that it is a name that will appeal to readers around the world….plus we think it’s a catchy name!”
And that is it. No mention yet of a Kobo eReader device.
New Taxonomy: So with the change Indigo/Kobo has redone their browsing classification on the site allowing for users to navigate by popular genre and category names. Well done. There is no sign of an Endeca badge on Kobobooks.com nor is their any reference to the classification vendor in the underlying code. That indicates they have created the underlying taxonomy themselves. This seems smart to me although it means the ebook project drifts farther from any advantage it may have shared with the chapters.indigo.ca parent site that is built on the Endeca platform. Not sure if this was done for cost, control, or reasons relating to spinning the project off. Glad to see the browsing experience has been fixed none the less.
Bigger Covers Images: I like the design and the new colour palette. Great to see they have upped the size of the cover images. The thumb nail sized cover images in the old design was a pet peeve. Clearly buying a book by its cover is the new thing in book e-retail. The welcome message pop-up bugs me though.
Renewed Commitment To International Sales: Nice to see Serbinis is still thinking global. Coming soon to the site is “More books from publishers around the world and the ability to buy in your local currency”
As for the name. I am still on the fence. It doesn’t evoke ‘books’ and ‘reading” anymore than Shortcovers (music covers anyone?) did, but I supposes it is shorter. I think they will have a problem with customers confusing them with Koodoo.ca but that is just because I associate mobile reading with both brands. Obviously non-Canadians won’t.
The Kobo device will probably wait until the new year (CES?) but Serbinis did promise us a $99 device so hopefully that is worth the wait.
And BTW they have handled the migration really well. The twitter page has moved but hasn’t been updated on their main page. I assume facebook is proving more difficult. Congratulations to all the Michaels(x3) and mad props to the UXTeam.
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