Woot! for Christ

In my previous post, I related my recent purchase of a Roomba robot vaccuum cleaner.  I purchased the Roomba on woot.com, an amazing e-commerce web site that has a simple strategy: sell one compelling product a day.  Each day, the Woot home page is completely devoted to one particular product. Generally, the products fall into a hi-tech category, but they have sold just about everything there. My purchases include the aforementioned Roomba, an HD-TV USB stick for my Mac, headphones, and a bluetooth music transmitter. The site is worth going to every day just to read the write-ups about the products. Each day, the products are presented in a tongue-in-cheek manner that makes it a must read.  And of course, the prices are usually the best you’ll find anywhere, suggesting that Woot works with manufacturers to move products that aren’t selling well on the open market and/or are refurbished. They also solve one of the biggest problems that many e-business sites have: shipping costs. No matter what they sell, shipping is only $5.00.

Then there’s the “Bag O’ Crap”. Every few weeks, woot sells this as a way to move product that has not sold yet. Each bag can hold up to three items for $1 each, so for $3 plus $5 shipping, you can get three unknown products sent to your door. There are many who wait and wait for the bag o’ crap just so they can order them and see what they get. And sell on eBay the things they don’t like.

Finally, Woot! is effective because they’ve built a loyal community. For each product sold, they open a discussion board for users to write comments. This allows those considering a purchase to see what others think of that days “woot”.  I always review the messages to get an understanding of 1) is the Woot price good? and 2) is this a quality product? And maybe 3) to wonder at the amount of time some people have to post messages on a relatively obscure e-business site.

Woot is successful because every day you know exactly what you’ll get and because they always present their products in a unique and interesting way. I make it a habit to check woot.com just about every day to be sure I don’t miss out on “something good”. If the site offered 500 products, I wouldn’t bother. By offering one, I can easily check it out and make a decision.

Sometimes I wonder if we as Christians cannot learn something from Woot. As I research “effective Internet ministry”, I wonder if creating an Internet presence with complex menus, podcasts, and blogs actually makes the message harder to find. What if we could offer a site that gave users a simple message every day? Something that addressed the issues of the day in a manner that conveyed Christ’s love simply? Users would be compelled to come to the site daily to be inspired.

Are there any sites out there like that right now? Let me know…

And look: w00t has been made “word of the year” by Merriam-Webster. Of course, the Woot web site is not the first use of the term. You can look up the full history of the term here.