Amazon Flunks Usability 101? Say it ain’t so…
Ian Lurie Dec 17 2007
Amazon needs to read GrokDotCom a little more. When creating links, use the words that call for action – the trigger words.
Amazon failed to do that here:
If you’re going to sign in, which words would you click? ‘Personalized recommendations’? Or ‘sign in’?
Personally, I’d click ‘sign in’. But Amazon linked from ‘personalized recommendations’.
I actually spent a few minutes trying to figure out where to go to log in – I assumed that the personalized recommendations link described how those recos worked.
Restore my faith, oh great Lord Bezos. Fix your usability gaffe…
Ian Lurie
CEO
Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent Inc. He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Forbes.com and TechCrunch. Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, SIC and ad:Tech. Follow him on Twitter at portentint. He also just published a book about strategy for services businesses: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle. Read More
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I have struggled with this too. It’s been like this for a while.
Totally unclear.
I’m not as sure Amazon is wrong. “Sign In” is an action with indeterminate benefit. The eye is naturally drawn to links when scanning, so highlighting the benefit seems to make more sense here.
… I’d guess for SEO to increase the value of the words “personalized recommendation”