What is a "wish list" or "compare products" link supposed to do?

I've been studying e-commerce templates for the last few days (oScommerce, Magento) and would like some advice if possible. I currently sell books online and am about to update my site which is almost 15 years old.

It seems to me that the e-commerce templates I've looked at are way over the top for my business model ie: books. I don't understand what some of those bells and whistles like "wish list" or "compare products" links are supposed to do.

I'm sure if I'm confused, there must be thousands (millions?) that must be confused as well.

I'm tempted to recreate my site and narrow it down to a 100 books or so using basic HTML and a WYSIWYG web builder.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

I am not sure for the "compare products" feature for a book selling site, but wishlist is a must, imho. Your customers may want to buy some book, but later. To not forget it, they add it to their wishlist. Also, they can send a link to wishlist to their friends to get the desired presents.

 

Well, wish list is not mandatory but helps your customer in ordering products which are out of stock or for bulk ordering.

Compare products help the buyer to compare chosen products with other similar products on different parameters.

 

The root purpose of both of these features is to increase conversion for you as a store owner. If I am looking at a product that I want to buy but don't have the cash then I can save it almost as a favorite item. This is my wishlist. A good e-commerce solution will then email the customer reminds about their wishlist so the user does not forget they want it or where they found it.

The compare products offer quicker conversions. How often do you research a product, but don't actually know what you are looking for? Say you want to buy a camera, you know a couple features you would like but don't know the exact brand/model you are interested in yet. This is where compare product comes in. The goal is to get you the information you need to make a purchase. Let me show you both these items next to each other so you don't have to continue hunting for information, then maybe you will make the decision to by right now from me. You will see this features gets used most often in technology sites - computers, cameras, etc.

 

Yes, the wishlist is great for getting returning customers, which is what having an ecommerce site is all about. The compare products feature is simply a tool to make things easier for your customers, which is always a plus for gaining customer trust.