
Amazon.com redesign - gorkemyurt
http://www.amazon.com
======
jkimmel
[http://imgur.com/cMshOJx](http://imgur.com/cMshOJx)

Screenshot for anyone who isn't seeing the new page.

~~~
junto
Thanks for this. I think that access to the new design depends on your geo-
location. Even using Amazon.com I still get the old site from Germany.

~~~
hobofan
Amazon uses cookies to track which site design you have seen last.

They are constantly redesigning their pages (I've seen up to 4 completely
different versions of a page in use at the same time). They have to lock the
design through cookies (otherwise you would be seeing a different design on
every refresh).

~~~
taoufix
You're right. I switched to incognito mode and got the new design.

------
pinaceae
To me classic Amazon has two big value props:

1\. Single platform to purchase stuff

2\. User Reviews

The second part is _my_ reason I even bother to look at product pages.
Ratings, comments - most helpful and most critical.

The Wirecutter and other special sites put this context as a centerpiece.

There is a lot of crap, let us help you order the best.

I wonder if I am such an outlier for Amazon - their homepage does not put "the
best" into display. The whole social/ratings aspect is not getting a lot of
love at all.

Those comments replaced the helpful store clerk, especially now that those no
longer exist irl. I ordered a trailer hitch and a user comment told me to swap
a screw with a pin for easier detachment - super stuff.

~~~
derefr
Presumably, Amazon is very good at SEO. If you're landing on their home page,
you're an exception; most people will land directly on product pages,
comparison pages, review pages, shopping list pages, sale pages, etc. The home
page, then, is for people who type "amazon.com" into their browser directly,
because they want to see what the site is about. Putting user-generated
content there might not be putting their best foot forward, especially if it's
in the form of plain-old boring text rather than eye-catching glossy product
photos. Reviews are one click away from any of those product-photo links, but
users have to show an initial commitment to spend at least 30 seconds clicking
around before Amazon will show them anything that might bore them, like walls
of review text.

~~~
dataminded
I don't agree. My thoughts are more inline with the articles below on Amazon
search vs Google search.

Amazon has some significant number of repeat customers who are buying from
Amazon because that is their preferred shopping venue not because search
(Google) is driving them to Amazon. To those customers the question is not,
where can I buy X but which model/version of X do I buy from Amazon. When
making the purchasing decision, the reviews are critical content not boring.

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/03/07/why-
amazonc...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/03/07/why-amazoncom-is-
a-credible-threat-to-google.aspx)

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/23/amazon-
prim...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/06/23/amazon-prime-
members-spend-almost-twice-as-much-as.aspx)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-
members-2014-1](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-members-2014-1)

~~~
derefr
But you don't need to sell return customers on your service. The only thing
Amazon needs to have on its page for these people (when they're logged out,
remember) is the search box. Everything else is for the first-time visitors.

------
GuiA
Those have been A/B tested for months, if not more than a year. I like it
better than the current default that most people see; I wonder why they
haven't fully committed to it yet.

~~~
kosievdmerwe
Possibly, because despite looking better, it performs worse on metrics they
care about and they've been trying to fix it and find out why.

~~~
quarterto
More like, they're doing A/B _properly_ and collecting enough data to make
sure it's not just noise.

~~~
aggie
A year is far longer than they would need just to achieve statistical
significance. They've got over 160 million unique visitors per month [1]. Even
showing the variants to only 1% of traffic you're working with over 50,000
visitors every day, enough to run large multivariate tests.

1 - [http://www.statista.com/statistics/271450/monthly-unique-
vis...](http://www.statista.com/statistics/271450/monthly-unique-visitors-to-
us-retail-websites/)

~~~
randomsearch
Statistical significance is not the same as significance in business terms. I
can't imagine anyone would use such an approach when deciding how much data to
collect.

~~~
jnbiche
>Statistical significance is not the same as significance in business terms

Depending on the level of significance, why not? If it's expensive or simply
not possible to gather the full data set, sampling is absolutely a valid basis
for business decisions. Why wouldn't it be?

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nknighthb
Sigh. So far they're only hiding text on the front page, but they're following
a trend that's far worse than the flat fad. I need information, and
unnecessarily huge product photos convey only a tiny fraction of the necessary
information -- even when they're photos for the right thing.

As it stands, fewer total things fit on my screen at once, and they
individually convey less information. I have to specifically roll over to see
product names, prices, and ratings.

Stop treating text as an enemy to be eradicated. Text is the basis of modern
civilization.

------
winterbe
Still no autofocus on the search input. After 20 years? Really? You have to
press 15x TAB in order to start searching. This bothers me since 2001 when I
ordered from Amazon for the first time.

~~~
__Joker
Really doubt this would have not crossed the designer or caught while A/B
testing. May be lot of people don't do a search after landing on the home
page. I for one hate sites which have auto-focus on every page, breaks up and
down arrows and sometimes the backspace. At least there are two chrome plug-
ins for auto-focusing on the search bar.

~~~
winterbe
I guess that 99.9% just use the search input to the find the stuff they are
looking for. What else could you do? Clicking through product categories?

BTW: UP/DOWN arrows and Backspace is redundant. Just use PAGE UP/DOWN or CMD
LEFT (chrome, mac osx) for back.

At the very least the search input should be focusable by clicking tab ONCE...
not 15 times.

EDIT: The whole Tab Order just makes no sense at all:

1\. Try Prime 2\. Sign In 3\. Try Prime 4\. Wish List 5\. Shopping Cart 6\.
Departments 7\. Fire & Kindle 8-14. No visible focus 15\. Search input

I bet this has NEVER been A/B tested.

~~~
icelancer
SPACEBAR is heavily used as PGDOWN. Auto-focus ruins that. I use SPACEBAR that
way on nearly every site, so let's not talk about anecdata like it's concrete
best practice UX.

~~~
hayksaakian
I do this too. Pressing tab one time to escape auto focused inputs is not a
big deal to me.

~~~
fredoliveira
Pressing tab one time usually lands you either on another form field or the
actual submit button, which hitting the spacebar would submit.

Autofocus is great on search engine homepages or search-oriented sites. Amazon
isn't search-oriented when on the site. They assume their recommendations are
usually spot on enough that you'll click through a percentage of the time, or
that you googled straight into the product page (as most people do).

------
latch
300 requests, 5MB, 24second until load.

~~~
harlanlewis
This is especially relevant given previous statements by Amazon that every
100ms delay resulted in a 1% profit drop.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273900)

~~~
missserenity
I believe that was on very specific pages, mostly the "shopping cart" page
that you reach before checking out.

------
manachar
One thing I find interesting is what design trends this redesign doesn't
follow.

For instance, the logo and search header could easily have been fixed to the
top of the window as is so popular lately.

All in all, the design seems solid and familiar enough to still find what you
need.

~~~
mrweasel
The fixed header is actually pretty stupid when you think about it. More and
more people are using 11" and 13" laptops, meaning that a fixed header takes
up space that could be used for actual content. In some cases the size of the
header means that users on small screen have to scroll endlessly.

It would make more sense to go back to having a left or right menu, if the
goal is to utilise screen space better.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Fixed headers also break pressing space to page through a document - my usual
way of reading the web. Space advances the viewport by one screen-height, but
with a fixed header, not all of this screen-height is visible.

~~~
tonyarkles
This drives me absolutely nuts. I hit space and it cuts off the top sentence
I'm trying to read.

------
linvin
It will be interesting to compare amazon with Flipkart (in India, but growing
quite big now.) Flipkart has largely followed Amazon's design. Yet, flipkart
has better information handling and quicker searches. (And Amazon India site
is noticeably slower these days when you visit product pages.)

I think the big difference is, how quickly they can change the home page
experience to respond to business decisions. For example, flipkart has got a
lot of attention in selling Redmi and other phones in "flash sales" \- when
potential users arrive at once. And flipkart has been amazing to make it easy
for users to quickly access those product areas. When they ran big billion day
recently, they had changed both their home page and mobile interface to
reflect the right set of options and to easily navigate in the site. In
general, amazon (Indian site) hasn't been able to put up similar experiences.
During the same big billion advert days, even amazon also gave big press
advertisements. However, they had hardly changed their home page for the
visiting users to highlight the right deals.

But then, if they continue to focus on lower prices, who will care for better
UI ?!

------
forgotAgain
I've been shopping there for years so they must know me pretty well. I can't
figure out why they have young women's dresses above the fold. Total miss. I'm
logged in so they should be able to tie it all together.

~~~
cpwright
Another silly thing they've shown me are the gag items. For example, you'll
look at the banana slicer with stupid reviews once, and then later on they'll
show you other items that other people interested in the banana slicer also
viewed, but no one will actually buy [e.g., some $4000 book on distribution of
toilets in China].

------
UXDork
Looks like they gave their navigation bar more visual weight by darkening it.

They're following the convention Facebook is using for their nav bar, which I
like. There's a logo, search, and utilities. This helps because many users
expect the navigation to be next to the logo. On a behavioral level it creates
a sense of comfort by establishing the security of routine/familiarity. The
downside/trade off is by placing the elements side by side instead of on top
of each other, it reduces scanability.

A lot of drop down menu options. Amazon does a good job with _information
scent_ and _progressively disclosing_ more information in the drop down. This
keeps the page from being cluttered and helps people navigate to their goal
locations quicker and easier.

I like that they have the prices for their products right out front. You don't
have to read more to find out. They give the people what they want to see
right away.

I could go on with analysis of the design but now seems like a good stopping
point.

------
lifeisstillgood
I seem to remember Steve Yegge saying that not a pixel moved on the Amazon
page without Jeff Bezos say so - and that had lead to a legion of designers
simply resigning in frustration (I think it was along with the "makes ordinary
control freaks look like hippy stoners" comment)

So what changed? Did Bezos mellow? Or did A/B testing reveal a vast amoun of
money lying on the table?

~~~
nandemo
Possibly Yegge was being a bit hyperbolic.

------
aaronbrethorst
I don't see any difference. You must be in a different A/B test bucket than
me.

~~~
el_duderino
Incognito window.

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MCRed
I was at amazon for the last redesign. It's interesting the direction they are
going. In the 1990s they went from nothing to selling everything, and things
got more and more complicated. During my time, we simplified a lot of the
layout and created the pop-up categories window (along with the search sidebar
that lets you filter hard drives by capacity, etc.)

I'm not in the A/B test to see the new design here, but from images it sure
looks like they are going simpler and simpler. Notice how the front page looks
a lot more like the Apple Store than it did in the past?

I think it's a good trend... hiding complexity can add a great deal to
usability.

------
matt_morgan
They have a choice on the HP of showing stuff I might not know I want, i.e.,
less related to my history, or stuff I probably do want, i.e., related to my
history. They are prioritizing /less than before/ the stuff related to my
history. This is actually a shift in the direction of some of their
competitors (if you can call them that), and has never been Amazon's style.
It's a shift.

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bigbugbag
I'm disappointed they removed text. I'm also annoyed that typing in the search
bar is afflicted by a delay probably due to a buggy script, possibly the one
that makes all the images in each row flicker as they try to fit the row space
again and again.

In short I'm not convinced by this redesign.

~~~
STRML
I agree 100%. It's far less usable than it was. The removal of text is yet
another one of those silly design trends I'm sure we'll look back at with
disdain in the near future.

~~~
smackfu
Which text are they removing in this redesign? Amazon has always been a fan of
displaying big banner images with embedded text.

------
lunz
Probably there were reasons to look like a bog-standard Wordpress template
with a wide header image, but some character would be nice, though. I guess
the real issues, however, are in the more frequented search and product pages.
And they seem usable to me at the first look.

------
swang
Went to site, no new update. Went into Incognito, got new site.

Apparently if you're cookied in or viewed an item recently it won't switch you
over. Possibly out of fear of losing sales?

~~~
missserenity
I'm pretty sure Amazon releases features incrementally to a percentage of
customers at a time to see how they react.

------
Someone1234
If you access Amazon from a touch-enabled device this has been the default for
months (e.g. Microsoft Surface).

It is designed to better work on touch than the old one.

------
benbristow
Looks nice, but once again the 'international' sites (For example,
amazon.co.uk) get ignored.

Took us ages to get the past 'new' design.

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tantalor
Does Amazon get a lot of front-page visits? Personally I only land on Amazon
product pages from searches for those products.

~~~
djorak
I always go to their frontpage (both desktop and mobile) to use their own
search bar.

------
pknerd
Day of Mourning for Data Scrappers.

~~~
grecy
I think anyone serious is using their free API.

------
insanemac
Just the homepage is update, the detail page still ugly, but it's a good start

~~~
smackfu
I'd phrase that as, the extensively A/B tested selling page is ugly.

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Syssiphus
With an add-on like HoverZoom this page turns into an obstacle course.

------
bfe
Fitting that this comes just after Bezos also finally does something overtly
public with Blue Origin (last month's ULA deal press conference), and that
both efforts still seem, relative to time invested & return at stake,
remarkably lame.

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geuis
Yet they still don't put auto focus the search text input.

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shapath
They have been testing this new design for quite a while now.

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bandwidthjockey
I'm disappointed I still get a prompt to install Flash.

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plicense
I see a lot of empty space here -
[http://imgur.com/DmXPa3J](http://imgur.com/DmXPa3J), to the left and right.

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cedias
Am I the only one that thinks their right column is weirdly looking? Plus
there is an ad at the top of it that makes the page look distorted.

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notastartup
but this page is still same

[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3D...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=laptops)

------
v33ra
Screenshots or it didn't happen!

~~~
flaie
[http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=924172newamazon.png](http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=924172newamazon.png)

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pcvarmint
No story here, move on :)

------
program
PageSpeed 47/100 desktop, 51/100 mobile

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com&tab=mobile)

~~~
icebraining
Doesn't seem to be getting the new design yet. In the screenshot I see the old
version.

