While shopping for a birthday gift for a birthday i missed (dang!) I tripped over Amazon.com's new product page. They now have tabs within tabs-- these new tabs are more like lenses, allowing different ways to view the product-- read reviews, peek in side, find items like it, etc. It's remarkably pleasent, and cleans up the page quite a bit. I wish yahoo would take a hint and do somethign aobut their tangled mess.... evolution is fine, but every so often you do have to take a leap forward....
, from oldest to newest:
I noticed the new tabs the yesterday and snapped a screenshot - in case they were a test - and really like what I see.
All the info that used to be on the page is now segmented by type of information. Their pages were really getting too long, unweildy and overwhelming for actual usefulness. The tabs seem to categorize the blocks of info into discrete sections and allow the end user to see that the info is still available, although a click away.
I like that it has cleaned up the page and allows me - as a user - to decide what I want to investigate further or not.
The only thing I don't like is that they are very low on the page, so that if your window or screen is small you might miss them.
Posted by erin @ 10/11/2001 02:17 PM pst
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This will take some getting used to. I am rather peeved that the ranking books I own has disappeared. Some of the other options have moved away or to a new place and now I have to learn what is where. An *about our redesign* would have been helpful. Amazon is in the midst of redesigning the wish list pages, which is an improvement (as noted by Dan Sanderson in his 10/10 post).
The duel pitching of products has bugged me to no end. The book I am interested is matched with another book for a *special* price. The layout of the information sucked, as it was not easily discernable which information when with which book. They also broke the flow of information about the book I would be interested in and separated the published date and number of pages from the top information regarding the book. I could not do a quick scan to find the information I really was interested in.
Posted by vanderwal @ 10/11/2001 08:50 PM pst
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...though it might be neat if the two-fer selections were themselves the result of some kind of collaborative filtering, i.e., the book you're looking at + a selection drawn from things you're already known to be interested in.
I don't think I'd mind an engine that produced custom discounts for me.
Posted by Adam @ 10/11/2001 11:38 PM pst
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I don't mind the two-fer offers, just their placement and execution. I always love a bargin.
Posted by vanderwal @ 10/12/2001 04:46 AM pst
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previously, with the product pulling all their supporting ancillary data onto a single page i.e. customers also bought this, customer lists, reviews etc. - i felt the offering was stronger ... it was all there at a glance (plus a scroll)
now amazon have split that across a new 4 or 5-tab area, i'm not sure. i mean, i'm sure they've user tested it to death and all ... and it does mean that they can get WAY more data associated with each item. which is A Good Thing.
and most of the 'amazon data-types' are still on the initial page at a glance, but in a way they've *relagated* both customer lists, and 'the page you made' - which i think is the smartest thing they do - though does anyone know the rationale for them not collating the data over time, rather than just over the recent clicks? storage/processing issues? security issues? or something more interesting?
Posted by dan hill @ 10/12/2001 07:25 AM pst
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hmmmm, all the information about a book on one page - how Cooper-esque of them :)
A big part of design is knowing what _not_ to include, and I think, from an armchair usability standpoint, that Amazon is quickly hitting the limits of information someone would want to see about a book.
Posted by victor @ 10/12/2001 11:13 AM pst
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