Amazon, the giant of Internet stores has had a redesign, and boy was it long overdue. With no real changes being introduced since it’s inception in 1998, Amazon has relied on the familiar interface to see it’s customer through their purchases. Now however, there is a new design, and we’ll take a look at what’s changed.
First thing to note I guess is the navigation. Whilst there are a couple of links across the top (for your account/deals of the week) you will find the main store navigation has moved to the side. The menu is operated by hovering over the categories, and utilising the pop up subcategories, which in our opinion is much better as you can now jump to any page/department from the left hand menu.
Once you find yourself on a category page, you’ll find you’re faced with 2 navigational menus, one horizontal (at the top) and the other down the left hand side. Don’t worry if you think that might be confusing, because it isn’t, the left hand menu shows you the subcategories, whilst the bar at the top has other products which are related to your category, but do not fall into the category. As an example to this, we looked at the PC and Video Games page, and across the top we were offered links to the Consoles page and the Strategy Guides page as well. All in all very useful.
The product pages have had a makeover too, with the left hand menu done away with, the buying options are displayed clearer as are the ability to add to wishlist.
You’ll also notice that the familiar orange bar has changed too. It is now blue, but for the fans of the orange do not worry, it is still heavily featured throughout the site, not only in the menu.
All in all, I think these changes are for the better, and a long time coming. It will be good to see more changes coming along, especially uncluttering the pages so that information is easier to find, but for a start, we like Amazon’s new look.