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Amazon offers Click-To-Call Ordering
 Chief Technology Officer and Executive Editor
Originally posted on VoIP & Gadgets Blog, here: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/amazon-offers-clicktocall-ordering.asp.
 I was on Amazon.com looking for a Garmin (News - Alert) GPS when I noticed I had the ability to click "Call me" to order stuff from Amazon. Interesting. Curious, I clicked the Call me button and saw this:
As seen above, it appears eStara is powering Amazon's Click-to-Call capabilities. Now I realize this isn't new "news" since the WSJ wrote about Amazn using eStara (News - Alert) awhile back. However, in all of my Amazon shopping I've never come across the click-to-call feature. Today, was the first time.
What's interesting is that this click-to-call feature only appears on certain product listings. I browsed around and noticed books don't seem to allow for click-to-call. That makes sense since Amazon would lose margins on a low-cost item.
So then I searched for an expensive item, namely a Playstation3 and it didn't have a click-to-call button. Kinda shoots that theory down. Then I looked at a couple of cameras and no click-to-call buttons their either. If anything, customers want customer service help when buying a digital camera. My father-in-law wouldn't buy a camera online because he wanted to speak to someone about the features and get advice which camera was best for his needs. So if anything, a c2c button would be perfect for the digital camera category.
 In any event, next, I looked at an Apple iPod nano and it has the click-to-call button. There seems to be little rhyme or reason where the button appears. Though I couldn't find the button on any item that cost less than $120. Amazon definitely seems to be rolling out the click-to-call button on more of their product pages.
Now if only they'd add a SIP dial-in URI so the moment I hit the urge to buy from their website, I could use SIP, and as long as I hit that website with credit card in hand at precisely 186,000 miles per second, I can instantly connect via VoIP... then everything will be fine.
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | X | | SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging.
SIP...more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X | | A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
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