Walmart, Rakuten tie up on e-books, grocery delivery service

Walmart will outdo Amazon sooner or later. It has Walgreen, too. Amazon boom may be over very soon.

I checked Rakuten's online shopping site yesterday to buy a household item, and it was so poorly designed, including lots of tiny font, and lacking in key info, like delivery time, that I simply went to Amazon instead, where the same item was cheaper.

So good luck with that.

I checked Rakuten's online shopping site yesterday to buy a household item, and it was so poorly designed, including lots of tiny font, and lacking in key info, like delivery time, that I simply went to Amazon instead, where the same item was cheaper.

Japanese web design in general is crap, though they've come to expect that and now it's turned into this weird thing that when designing for the Japanese, you have to incorporate crappy design to meet their expectations and provide them a good user experience.

That said, I know a programmer in Rakuten, and he has said their systems are garbage. They are in desperate need of quality programmers, but that their company culture not only doesn't foster quality programmers, it actually ends up driving anyone with any skills to other companies.

I am sticking with Amazon and Kindle store(could be improved).

Can log into local or overseas stores using English app.

Found a big difference between the English and Japanese user interfaces (English has more search, etc options).

Got a shock, Friday early hours I ordered 30kg of Genmai delivered Saturday afternoon(site said 3-4 days till shipment, no fee).

Buy from overseas slow, boxes dented/damaged etc local orders are pristine.