I'm an amazon woman

I think amazon.com meets many of the criteria in the reading for this module. It has a recognizable template, with a navigation bar along the top, which remains consistent throughout. Once you click on a heading, such as “books”, the color of the bar changes and the tab is highlighted. It reminds me of the tabs on the sides of cookbooks, separating out the different sections. The colors used are subtle and not distracting. The yellow smile under the amazon logo is eye catching and helps assure the user that he/she is on the same Web site. Like on the logo on salon.com, the amazon.com logo brings the user back to the home page. The navigation tools on the left help to separate each section with heads and subheads and a search function can be found near the very top of the column. I don’t think this was emphasized (or even mentioned) in the reading for this module, but I highly prize a visible search function. It makes life so much easier if you don’t have to search for the search function. I also like how no horizontal scrolling is necessary and most of the important information is found “above the fold.”

On the right hand side of the page users will find promotional materials for best sellers, for instance, contained in boxes that they can click on or ignore. One drawback is the multitude of images, which might take a long time to load on a dialup modem or with an outdated computer, but I don’t find them to be distracting, because they are fairly organized. I like how you can click on the title or the cover of the book to get details on products and how you can even “look inside” books. (I’m using the books section as an example, because it’s the one I use most often, but I have found the site to be fairly consistent throughout its other sections.)

Another feature that I like, thought it’s kind of creepy, is the way the site is personalized when a user visits it on a home computer. Right on the home page I see suggestions of books and music, based on previous searches and purchases. There is also a tab labeled “robin’s store.” One thing I didn’t like is Robin’s gold box, which rattles and shakes up in the right hand corner. But now that I’m writing this, it’s nowhere to be seen. I think this site resembles the directory sites in the readings for this module, such as yahoo.com, in that the primary goal is to provide links to information. It gives the user what he or she is looking for.