For this monthly review I\u2019ve decided to take a look at a classic shopping website. This is a website most have heard of, and probably where many turn to when they want and\/or need to order something online. This website supposedly has a fantastically easy layout to navigate, and its overall appearance is nothing to scoff at. Steve Krug, web consultant and author of the book Don\u2019t Make Me Think<\/i>, continually praises this site throughout his book and even uses it as comparisons to \u201cworse off\u201d websites. I actually have not visited this website recently, so this will be a good test to see if the site deserves my love as well.<\/p>\n
This website is none other than Amazon.com<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Before I even begin clicking on every available link that I can get ahold of, I take a quick scan of the homepage to see what\u2019s going on. The homepage seems pretty clean overall. Every section of the page is labeled and separated from the rest well enough that I don\u2019t assume that it\u2019s all one jumbled pile of items that Amazon<\/i> is featuring for the day. My search bar is conveniently at the top of the screen, next to the logo, along with the user login, the cart, etc. Overall, it\u2019s not really an overbearing homepage.<\/p>\n
The item I\u2019m looking for is an extension cord for a usb cable. Let\u2019s see how well the search goes, considering I\u2019m not the savviest at finding the hardware section in most stores.<\/p>\n
The moment I type \u201cusb\u201d into the search bar, tons of \u201cresults\u201d flow out from underneath. To my surprise, after scanning through the new list that just popped up, I find the keywords I\u2019m looking for; usb extension cable. When I click on those words in the list (I\u2019m assuming I can click on that), my search loads a new page as if I typed the whole phrase in the bar and hit enter. On this new page the items appear under the search bar (the phrase I just searched also appears under the search bar along with other related searches), and there is also a new column on the left side of the page. This column contains various lists that, when you click on them, narrow down the original search to only show what items you checked from those lists. I decide to sort them by consumer rating (and then by price, which apparently was also above the items.<\/p>\n
When I decide what cable I like I click on its link, and I\u2019m taken to that item\u2019s page. Just for fun I decide to go back a page and then click on the picture of the item to see what happens. The picture also takes me to the item\u2019s page, which I think is pretty neat. On this new page, the item\u2019s picture and general information are most prominent on the screen. The price is listed directly under the name of the item, and under the price I actually find that the wire I chose comes in different lengths. Then, while casually scrolling around the screen, my mouse moves across the picture of the item. I\u2019m actually surprised (but not surprised because, hey, it\u2019s Amazon<\/i>) that there\u2019s suddenly an enlarged image of the item that pops up on the page.<\/p>\n
When I decide that this is the item I want, I look to the right side of the page where the \u201cadd to cart\u201d button is located. I take note of how the button is suitably large for the section it\u2019s in, how the button is colored differently than any of the other buttons, and how there\u2019s even a little cart icon on the button. No mistaking that this is the button I\u2019m looking for. I also casually take note that: above the button there is a dropdown list for how many items I want to buy, and below there is an \u201cadd to wish list\u201d button.<\/p>\n
I decide I want one cable and then add my item to the cart. I\u2019m then taken to a new page where my added item is displayed at the top of the screen in its own little section. Within this section I can \u201cedit my cart\u201d or \u201cproceed to checkout\u201d. I suddenly decide I hate this cable and I do not want to buy it, so I click on the \u201cedit my cart\u201d button. At the shopping cart page, my one item is displayed along with my subtotal underneath it. Under the details of the item are the options \u201cdelete\u201d or \u201csave for later\u201d. I\u2019m not really sure what save for later means and how it works, but I don\u2019t really care. I want to delete my item. So I click on the link and the item vanishes from my cart (without even changing pages). In its place there is a confirmation that my item was removed, and a link back to that item.<\/p>\n
All in all, I would say that this hypothetical online shopping experience was probably one of the least painful I\u2019ve had in a while. Had I not deliberately taken my time to notice all the details I was going through for my process, I could have done this in about five minutes or less (instead of an hour and a bit since I wrote while I went through the site). Amazon.com<\/i> is a very user friendly website, in my opinion, for several reasons Mr. Krug mentions in his book. I only needed to scan through certain items on the pages before I found what I want, and even when I barely<\/i> typed my query in the search bar the website did the thinking for me. The layout was also pretty clean so it was easy to tell the differences between the sections of the page. No wonder Amazon.com<\/i> had so many praises from Mr. Krug, especially since the site has probably changed quite a bit since 2005. 10\/10 would hypothetically shop again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For this monthly review I\u2019ve decided to take a look at a classic shopping website. This is a website most have heard of, and probably where many turn to when they want and\/or need to order something online. This website supposedly has a fantastically easy layout to navigate, and its overall appearance is nothing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-review","category-spring-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2827,"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions\/2827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrewyames.com\/artm2210\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}