In "Amazon: No Longer the Role Model for E-Commerce Design," Jakob Nielsen explains the good, the bad, and the ugly of Amazon.com. In 2001, Amazon.com was the model for e-commerce sites; that is no longer the case. E-commerce sites that emulate Amazon.com's design will find difficulty in retaining good usability.
Amazon.com is its own little e-commerce, and what works well for it most likely will not work well for other site. Amazon.com has grown so much in the last few years that it has changed the way it website functions. Here are a few bad, good, and ugly things that Amazon.com does.
New users to Amazon.com's website will have a hard time wading through all the muck to get the content that they are searching for. Most of the users at Amazon.com are old pros who have been using this site for years, and have become skilled at slicing through the unneeded right to the stuff that they went there for. It was found that one page for a single book contained over 250 links and/or buttons. That is a lot for one book.
The lowdown on this one is that if you don't have your own search engine technology, don't include it on your site. If people want to search the whole internet, they will go to google, dogpile, yahoo, or whatever other search site. Amazon.com gets away with it because they do have their own search technology, and they are so big that they can offer that to other people.
With Amazon.com it is not the same in different countries, in fact, it is difficult to order your products. You don't know what is available on other countries' websites.
Amazon.com has a lot of ads on its website. This is because they are confident that people will go out to other sites, and still come back and buy from Amazon.com. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by doing it like this.
Amazon.com uses its popularity to allow different vendors to sell from its website. It lessens their ability to ensure that the product you order will get there. It also makes it difficult for you to know who you are dealing with.
When you are ordering from Amazon, you get a confirmation email and what you buy. If, for some reason, you do not get your product, Amazon.com always lets you know why. They are among the best at fulfillment in the e-commerce industry.
"Customers who bought this book also bought" is a great way to advertise on-site, so that people know what others bought. [Sometimes, it even helps you find something when you don't know everything about it.]
This is one of Amazon.com's best services. In e-commerce it is difficult to sell whose quality cannot be determined before the purchase. The sample allows consumers to check what they need, and relax about the sale.
They say that they have the best selection on the internet, and they live up to that. The other thing is they keep the same link even if a product is no longer for sale from them, and provide a place where those who own it already can sell to others that still want it.
Amazon.com is still the best e-commerce site, and that is because its strengths are unique to itself. This design article will help me because I plan on having an e-commerce site in the future. I will be able to follow Amazon.com's lead, and do what I can from their design, but also focus on the things that will make my page unique.