The CNN e-store

"The #1 name in news and information is now your source for online shopping."

Or so says CNN. Dedicated Amazon fans might be disappointed by CNN's bravado. The quality of the CNN store's graphic accurately represents the quality of its store.

Which is to say it's not so good.

What if you decided to look for a book in this script-generated snowstorm of ugliness?

You might expect to be catapulted from the CNN "books, music and movies" link into an area displaying some hot titles, with a search option hooked into every existing book in existance. In other words, Amazon, without the neat user database stuff, buried a click into a news website.

Alas, no. The link just opens a little sub-menu, allowing you to choose from books and magazines, movies and music.

Fine, you nasty little sub-menu. We choose "books."

This does not bring us to books. We're instead taken to Shop@ Netscape. Well, fine, can we do some e-shopping now? We're ready to e-buy. We have our credit cards out, and are prepared to spend e-money on old fashioned paper books.

One clunky search later, and we're on our way to buying "Choke," by Chuck Palahniuk. Or are we?

In the digital equivelent of Fibber McGee's closet, the engine coughs up a "browning Browning Invector Choke Tube Wrench, 12 Gauge," more gun accessories, a Charlie Jones album and fishing rods, amongst other non-readable detritus.

At the end is the audio version of the book we're looking for, for $58.00. Terrific. We should've been more specific, although a general search at Amazon digs it up as the very first item.

Let's look again. A "books" search digs it up — in second place, but it's there. Sans any author credit, though. Also: No actual product information to speak of, and, oh — we're shopping at Barnes and Noble, now.

I thought we were shopping at CNN. Or was it Netscape?

If you were to ask usability guru Jakob Nielsen what he would make of all this, he might say something like this:

"Look, kid. You've got a great ass, and I think you can sing. But that's only going to take you halfway in this business. Listen, stop by my office tonight, and maybe we can work something out.

"What's that? Oh, the CNN 'e-store'? Holy mother of Jesus! What type of crap is that? Four clicks before you're even looking at product! To hell with that as long as Amazon is still around. Now shut yer yap and bring me that schnapps. Not the cherry schnapps. The peach schapps."

And he'd be right. Cherry schnapps is some sick shit. And four clicks to start the shopping process is for fools. To "shop" at CNN is to subject yourself to a slow, ugly dragging through piles of colorful e-clutter.

At this point, a curious observer might wonder:

What were they thinking?

Sadly, most evil things in this world can be explained by numbers. Corporate rape of the environment. Government indifference to international atrocities. State-sponsored lotteries. Someone looked at the odds, and made the smart play.

In CNN's case, an enormous number of users are blundering through the site. According to Jupiter Media Metrx, AOL/Time Warner sees 70,701,000 unique visitors a month, a large number of whom stagger through CNN, no doubt.

Of this group (let's say 35,000,000, to be conservative) 1% are probably confused enough to click on an ad as poopy as the one for the CNN store. Of that group, maybe 5% actually have the combination of gulability and dogged determination needed to hack through the layers of script-generated hogwash to make a $15 purchase.

By my numbers, that's 17,500 poor fools, who will spend $262,500 in a month's worth of glorious consumption.

Considering the CNN might have gotten an talented intern to hack together the whole mess over a long weekend, that's a pretty sweet number. And it's a number other completely non-shopping sites have probably been thinking about, too.

The smart consumer will avoid CNN's e-store.

The smart consumer will take time out of his or her busy weekend, and mutter a little prayer for the souls of the guys who gave CNN's e-store a green light.

The devil has funny punishments awaiting them in Hell.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)