startup hustle

Amazon announced a site redesign at the beginning of September but there has not been much since then. I recently started seeing the new Amazon site design (do you?)  on my work computer, but co-workers were not seeing the same. It has been back and forth at home, some days I see it, and others I don’t.

The Amazon site has not seen a full redesign in years. Over that time, as Amazon sells more and more goods, the site has become rather cluttered and there is a ton of content to absorb. The first time I read about Amazon’s site design was in Steve Krug’s popular book, Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. The book referenced designs from the late 90′s where Amazon was one of the first sites to use tabs. Amazon has since moved on from the tabs but is this redesign in the right direction?

Overall I like the direction Amazon took on the design. The largest difference being the main navigation area being toned down and the use of neutral colors. The search box is still front and center as it is the best way to navigate the crazy number of products. Below are a few comparisons of the old and new designs. Click on the images to see a larger version.

When comparing the homepages, the current design uses bold colors where the new design uses shades of light gray. The list of departments is not automatically expanded down the left side in the new version which helps clean up some of the clutter.

The image above shows the expanded department navigation. The top screenshot shows text options only. The new version on the lower screen displays images of the products and expands further across the page.

When comparing an internal department page, in this example Kindle eBooks, the pages show less differentiation. The Browse box on the left hand side has minor changes and the navigation is the only noticeable update.

The Amazon redesign is a move in the right direction and I hope that is released publicly (if it hasn’t already) soon.