Zoomii – a real Bookstore Online
I know a lot of people who love book stores. For an avid reader leisurely browsing a good book store is an experience that is tough to beat. Offline book retailers know this and that’s precisely why they let coffee shops like Starbucks co-locate in their plum locations. I also know a lot of people who buy books online whether it be Chapters, Amazon, or AbeBooks. However, nobody buys a book online because of a great ‘experience’. You buy online if you know exactly what book you want – you search, add to shopping cart, & check out – and the online book store experience is over. Chris Thiessen of Cambridge, ON understands this – he’s a fan of bookstores but doesn’t browse books online. Thiessen is the Founder of a web start-up called Zoomii that launched today. His mission is to take the best of both worlds and create a new online shopping experience. Zoomii is like a real bookstore as seen through Google Maps. All the books are on shelves and BIG books are BIG & small books are small. Like the real world. When you enter Zoomii, you’re at the Bestseller bookshelf and you use you mouse to drag and zoom in to other sections and bookshelves.
Zoomii is an Amazon Web Services case study dream. Thiessen uses their EC2 for hosting, S3 for storage, ECS for book information, and affiliate program for paying the bills.
