Former Paragon of Usability

Steve Krug in his book Don't Make Me Think constantly referred to the Amazon.com model of usability. I agree, Amazon is a well designed site, but it seems they're having growing pains.

Last quarter, a few years after the Internet bubble burst, Amazon turned a profit for the first time ever. They're re-working their business model, trying to cut costs in any way possible. Since most of their money goes into storing, packing, and shipping books and music, the cost savings will have to come from warehousing and shipping. Amazon is making deals with third party vendors, and even letting people like you and me sell our stuff on their website, and taking a percentage of our profits. Cost to Amazon - zero, it's pure profit.

Recently they were in the news because book publishers didn't want them advertising used books on the same page as new books. Used book stores have existed since book stores existed, but for some reason they feel Amazon selling used books is a threat. Perhaps another part of this is the fact that Amazon doesn't pay as much for books as other book sellers.

Wish List Woes

A few weeks ago, Amazon.com changed the way their wish list works. I have over 100 items in my wish list. The old way showed you 50 items per page, the new way shows you 25. They have this new "Hide Edit" button so you can view your wish list the way someone else would, except when you do that the numbering starts at #26 instead of #1. Very strange. I sent them an e-mail about this.

I just tried to get a Screen Cap of this, and it seems they fixed it.

I now have to click three or four times to see my whole wish list instead of just twice. A page with 50 items is not much longer than some of their pages with lots of reviews, or some of the book lists they have.

I admit the "start numbering from 26" problem isn't major, but it makes me wonder about their current levels of quality control. Are they also cutting costs by not checking their code thorougly? If new features don't translate into money, will they not implement them?

Their sophisticated user tracking system has the ability to rival Doubleclick. If Amazon is now driven purely by profit, it might not be long before we find our information being sold to the highest bidder, and our activity on other sites tracked. "You recently viewed Kuro5hin.org, you might be interested in the following books..."

You can also sort/filter your wish list by a number of different criteria - DVD's only, Books only, by Price, by Last Updated, by Date Added, etc. Only the "Go" button doesn't work in Netscape! That's right. My Netscape 4.76 browser won't submit when I click on the "Go" button.

Buy from us, buy from someone else, buy from us...

Now Amazon's doing this big 'buy it from someone who's not us' thing, but their UI hasn't been updated to include this.

• Toshiba 24AF41 24" Pure Flat Stereo Television

This page tells you to add the item to your shopping cart to see the price, and that the seller will ship in 1-2 days. But wait, there's no "Add to Shopping Cart" button. The truth is Amazon is out of stock on this item, so you can't add it to your shopping cart. They want you to buy it from one of the other merchants mentioned on the page.

These two concepts - buy from us, buy from someone else - are mixed on the page without a clear seperation between the two. You don't know which set of instructions to follow, and when one of the processes breaks - in this case the buy from us process - you're left scratching your head because you're getting cues from the buy from someone else process that it should work. (If you didn't understand that last paragraph, imagine how you'd feel when confonted with this situation in person.)

Gold Box Woes

Amazon has a new Gold Box feature designed to make us salivate over items that are only available for a brief amount of time. They're only available once a day, and you have to decide to buy them within an hour in order to get the discount.

I was thinking about buying one of the items, so I clicked on it and added it to my shopping cart. When I went back to the Gold Box page, it showed that item, but the "Add to Cart" "Pass Up Forever" buttons were gone. Where were they? I clicked on the next item number and it took me to a Gold box help page. Not what I was expecting.

I decided I didn't want the item and removed it from my cart. Then and only then did the Add to Cart/Pass Up Forever buttons return. Apparently I had to either buy the item or pass on it before it would show me the next item. I couldn't add it to my cart and not buy it.

If only they told me somewhere that I would have to make a decision after I added an item to my shopping cart. Either when I added the item to my cart, and/or especially when I went back to view my Gold Box and didn't know why I couldn't go on to the next item. And why would clicking on the 1-5 circles take me to help rather than the item number.

Follow the Bouncing "Rate This Item" Box

I spent a few minutes today trying to rate an item to get better reccomendations. I was scrolling up and down the page trying to find the Rate This Item box. When I couldn't find it, it came to me. They moved it. I would have to look in more places for it. It was only moments after that that I found it in the left column. Thanks for the heads up Amazon. Why did you move it anyway. Too much stuff cluttering up the middle column?

If Amazon's usability is going down, what does this mean for the rest of the world?

Well, I think this might be a temporary thing, but then you know the joke 'What does an 800 lb Gorilla eat - Anything he wants to.' Amazon is that 800 lb gorilla, and if part of cutting costs is paying less attention to usability then there's little we can do about that.

Let's just hope the rest of the industry doesn't follow and start making things that aren't usable.

Update 11/25/02: I opened up Amazon.com today to search for a particular title, and was presented with the usual Search box, but with a "Use Gift Explorer" checkbox in it... What's the Gift Explorer? There's nothing to click on to learn more about the Gift Explorer, and a trip to the help section didn't turn up anything. Why am I going to use a feature whose purpose I don't understand?

Update 11/27/02: I wanted to rate a product I owned in order to get recommendations, and I couldn't find the rating box. Now it's back in the center column, and it's just a link with the text: Mark, rate this item to get personal recommendations. Stop moving this thing around on me!

Update 1/21/03: I had a lot of strangeness this holiday season, mostly involving a package that showed up that Amazon had said hadn't even shipped yet. When they finally said it would ship, I was wondering if I would get two, but it turned out that the shipment wasn't entered into the system until well after it was shipped.

Also, at 800 or fewer pixels wide, the Apparel guy gets a spooky "headless" look.

This is because the "www.'s Gold Box" text wraps. causing the images to be moved up a bit, seperating them from the navbar a little more... still spooky, especially now that the hoodie is black & white. The first time I saw this was after seeing a commercial for a horror movie... I thought it had come out of the TV and invaded my computer as well!

Also, if you buy an e-Book from Amazon, the "View Digital Orders" link is buried way down in the Your Accounts page under "View by Order." Actually, it's the last link there.

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