

Amazon.com begins rolling out new homepage design - CrazedGeek
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/09/amazoncom-begins-rolling-out-new-homepage-design.html

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atacrawl
I _love_ the new masthead/search area, but I still think the main content area
needs a little work -- everything has a "floating in space" look to it because
the layout doesn't contain enough visual anchors to prevent it from looking
unstructured.

All in all, I like where this is going.

~~~
jgroome
I feel like there's lots of blank space in the main area and everything seems
to be cramped into the nav.

I feel like somebody like my parents wouldn't know where to click (or even
start to look) if they were looking to buy a book.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Search.

I hardly ever browse by category, they're too generic. Whenever I'm looking
for something on Amazon, I go right for the search bar.

This new design makes an emphasis on search so I'm guessing Amazon noticed
that other people use the same the same way I do.

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artursapek
Is this strategy really working that well for them? I have all four of these
back-to-back:

"More Items to Consider" "Related to Items You've Viewed" "Inspired by Your
Browsing History" "Additional Items to Explore"

Then at the end, "Continue Shopping: Customers Who Bought Items in Your Recent
History Also Bought" They must move a lot of product this way. I don't know
that it makes for a very effective homepage, because of the overwhelming
clutter, but I must be wrong because they've been sticking with this for
years.

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nphase
While they're at it, they should really remove the Kindle ad from the homepage
already. They know I own one, why keep trying to sell me it?

~~~
aphexairlines
Does the site recognize you? ("Hello, nphase" at the top)

~~~
nphase
Yes. I also have the prime logo instead of the normal ones, and the 2 items in
cart that were added a few days ago but not purchased yet.

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sammathews
I like this.

Clear user flow. Less distracting colours - Dark colour against mainly light
BG should = call to action. Iconography, search icon instead of go. Removing
the cart from the blue bar gives it separate visual identity than search..
Less help text/descriptive text.. more white space.

A breath of fresh air from Amazon, lets hope they take this redesign
throughout quickly. I like designs that carry me through the site on a soft
fluffly cloud.

------
nikcub
very similar to the google redesign

    
    
      * {
        padding: 25px;
        border-random: 1px solid #ccc;
      }
    

done

~~~
kirillzubovsky
border-random, nice touch ;)

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zorked
Huge focus on digital stuff. You have to use a drop-down menu to get to
physical goods...

And this used to be a bookstore.

~~~
dredmorbius
That's the operative phrase: "used to be".

Amazon is now general merchandising, though focused on information
(printed/electronic) products.

Wal-Mart's biggest current competitor is Amazon. There's a large initiative at
Wal-Mart to develop an R&D lab near San Francisco:
[http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/inside-walmart-
la...](http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/inside-walmart-labs/)

Good luck matching Amazon's culture with that mandatory drug test requirement.

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rick888
I will be glad when this finally rolls out. I am a marketplace seller and
whenever amazon makes any changes, there are tons of other bugs that come
along with it and my sales drop dramatically until they are fixed.

The last major set of changes happened in July.

But, I would rather have it now then mid-December,.

~~~
revorad
How are you going to benefit from these new changes as a seller?

~~~
rick888
It will probably have negative effects on my sales. The new changes will
showcase digital purchases/downloads and I'm selling physical goods.

~~~
revorad
It does seem to highlight digital stuff on the homepage. But if I look at any
particular product page, then I see new related category links on the top.
Those might help your business.

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Qz
I had the new design for about a week, before it even showed up on HN, but it
seems to have gone away for me.

~~~
NathanKP
Same here. I've been seeing the redesign for at least a week already. I wonder
how I keep getting in test groups. It seems like every time a major site like
Google or Amazon does a redesign I end up seeing the it way before everyone
else. I wonder how these sites chose who to show the redesign to first as test
cases?

~~~
elangoc
It's done randomly. They do a controlled test of a feature by turning the
feature "on" for a window of time, and measure users' reactions in the control
vs. experimental groups in real time. Experimental bias is minimized by the
traffic being simultaneous, having a large sample size (visitors), and
randomly deciding who gets put in which group.

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spiralganglion
Does anyone else feel weird about the ad in the top-right?

They've got some copy written up about the change here:
<https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000347381>

TL;DR: More Amazon revenue = lower Amazon prices.

I'm not quite buying it. You don't go to Walmart and see ads for McDonalds —
you see a whole McDonalds. Amazon, like Walmart, is the sort of company that
tries to sell _everything_. Wouldn't Amazon rather find a way to sell whatever
is being advertised? Perhaps this is just a way for them to scrape a bit off
the top of sales they don't (or can't) offer in-house.

