Other online wedding registries focus on high-touch, high-tech customer service as Amazon relaunches its site and adds options.

Amazon has upped the ante in yet another traditional category—this time, the wedding registry—with a revamp that includes gift ideas, gift-giver tracking, a 180-day return policy and the ability to add items from other retailers’ websites.

Amazon has been in the wedding registry business for eight years, but says the revamped site debuts easy-to-use features such as a gift-giver tracker, the ability to add items from other retailers’ websites to the Amazon registry and a list of the top 100 requested wedding gifts on Amazon. The registry also features three boutiques that sell select items from New York’s Museum of Modern Art, home decor designer Jonathan Adler and e-retailer and wedding registry Michael C. Fina, which will sell a selection of its luxury tableware.

“The new Amazon Wedding Registry experience is simple, modern, fresh and more relevant to millennial couples and their evolving needs,” Amazon says in announcing the relaunch. “It also makes it easier and more fun to find the gifts you want and browse your list.”  Couples can add products from any site to their Amazon Wedding Registry by adding the Universal Registry Button to their bookmarks, an Amazon spokeswoman says.

Gift-givers may contribute collectively to an Amazon gift card, which engaged couples can use toward anything on Amazon.com, and couples “can register for anything from backpacks to tents to cameras to flippers – so they’re prepared for any adventure,” the spokeswoman says.

Starting sometime this summer, Michael C. Fina will direct couples who register at its website to Zola.com, where Fina’s full line of tableware and home decor products will be sold, a Michael C. Fina spokesman says. The e-retailer will use Amazon as its fulfillment service for gifts purchased from MichaelCFina.com, Amazon.com/wedding and Zola.com, the spokesman says.

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Amazon’s wedding registry rivals say they’re not tied up in knots.

“It does not keep me up at night,” says Shan-Lyn Ma, CEO and co-founder of Zola.com, an online wedding registry and e-retailer aimed at millennial consumers. Consumers born between 1980 and 1999 are generally considered members of the millennial generation.

Ma says Zola offers several services unavailable at Amazon, such as a mobile app specifically for its wedding registry; the option of giving the couple an experience or service—a meal delivery service, for example—rather than a product; letting multiple gift-givers chip in to  buy a single, usually expensive, gift; customer service representatives to help family and friends order gifts by telephone; and the ability to control when gifts are shipped so they don’t  sit on a doorstep while the couple is on their honeymoon.

Zola also offers a universal registry on mobile, desktop and in an app, Ma says. “Registering is a very high-touch, important experience, usually for couples who are both working and have a lot to do creating a wedding of their dreams,” Ma says. “We believe a wedding registry should be meaningful for both the couple and the people who buy the gifts. We built Zola to make it as easy as possible, as well as beautiful and personal.”

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Online wedding registry TheKnot.com, operated by media company XO Group Inc., No. 591 in the Internet Retailer 2015 Second 500 Guide, lets couples aggregate gift registries from such retailers  as Macy’s, No. 6 in the just-released Internet Retailer 2016 Top 500 Guide, Target (No. 22), and Crate & Barrel (No. 71) as well as any online store, to an online registry that others can access and purchase from, the company says. The registry also lets users link their Knot registry to registries they maintain at other retailers. When an item is purchased, both the retailer from which the purchase is made and the Knot registry are updated, the Knot says. 

 

 

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