Although the Amazon UI has had a reasonably good overhaul, its been pretty much cosmetic. I like the fact that they have more intuitive dropdowns, a large cart icon and a navigation panel on the left. Sadly the number of clicks I require to accomplish a few tasks and few of the under-performing features leave much to my imagination.
I think Amazon has done an amazing job in terms of site uptime, customer service and on-time delivery/handling of orders. A few changes would go a long way!
So here’s my ramblings on a few:
Search
- Make everything searchable. I mean EVERYTHING! Make all past items (for the last 5 years in my case) I have purchased on Amazon searchable. Its a big big pain trying to find that one thing I had ordered once and I want one more of it or want to gift to my friend. Make it easy and straightforward.
- Make my wish list searchable. How am I supposed to manage/find items in the 200+ items in my wish list (or shopping list or any list for that matter).
- In addition to the above, if I search for a keyword that matches against things I have bought in the past and/or have in my wish/shopping lists then why not show them in small boxes on the sides on the search results page?
- Please make search fast! Always helpful. Since right now I happen to be using Google to search amazon. Looking for that Objective-C book on Amazon. My search is “Amazon objective-c” and off I go! Also, how about auto-complete as soon as I start typing anything. Maybe the name of a book or author or product etc.?
Shopping Cart
- Why does deleting an item require a page refresh (AJAX anyone?)? Moreover why do I have to go one by one on each item to delete them? How about a “delete all” button with a warning popup? I know they all sound like revenue losing propositions, but offer an awesome customer experience. Believe me, if I don’t want to purchase something then a bad delete implementation is not going to make me!
- I as a regular user of Amazon am always shopping or looking for a few things. Gifts, something for the house, books, what have you. I may or not buy them at the same time and hence am forced to use the “save for later feature”. Moreover lets say I am trying to buy a few small things for my parents anniversary. Why can’t I make a separate cart for them which once filled with the items I so desire, can be purchased with 1 click? Basically I should be able to create custom carts on the fly.
Lists
- Although a few changes have been made in lists they are still not manageable. Apart from the fact that I can’t search them, there is no capability to subscribe to or get updated when things get added to my friends wish lists. There is no easy way to share my wish list on my blog (as a widget) or on Facebook etc. If fixed I think lists can be a big winner and revenue driver for Amazon
- If I visit a product which is already in my wish list, instead of informing me of that fact, Amazon keeps showing me the “Add to Wishlist” button. Would be really cool if Amazon fixed that and went a few steps ahead. How about knowing who my friends are (social network here we come!!) and showing me which of my friends have that item on their public lists.
Account/Orders
- Usually when I’ve placed a few orders on Amazon and they have been shipped I sometimes come to Amazon to track those orders. This tracking requires me to make 3 clicks before I even land on the page where my orders are:
Account (click) -> Recent Orders:Go (click) -> Username/password (click)
Why can’t there be an easier way to track orders? Moreover the estimates for delivery and shipping that Amazon gives (at least to non-Amazon Prime members) are way off most of the times. How about send me an email (or SMS) when the product gets delivered? UPS/DHL provide that state in their API’s, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to implement. To improve the above 3-click process I can propose:
Account_Dropdown:Recent Orders (click) -> Username/password (click)
OR
If I’ve logged in within the last 30 minutes then just skip the Username/password step and reduce the entire process to 1-click!