Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Amazon used to be all about simplicity and usability - at least that's what I remember from my last order there, maybe 4 years ago. Now it seems my account is long-since deleted, and I figured I'll just go ahead and create a new one.

To make a long story short, there is absolutely no obvious way of knowing whether or not you're logged on, whether or not your account is active, or anything of the sort. I clicked on "Your Account," got a million different account management options and not even one "You're not logged in, click here to register" or somesuch option.

That, in my book, is very stupid.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006 5:42:12 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
It's very hard *not* to notice you're logged in on Amazon.com.
* This "John's Amazon.com" tab right at the top of the screen, and
* a bold "Hello, John Smith. We have recommendations for you. (If you're not John Smith, click here.)" text greeting you, and
* a "John's Plog" link on the right, and
* a "Customers with Similar Searches Purchased" section, and tons more of devilish marketing props tailored for your customer profile.
Ilya
Tuesday, December 12, 2006 5:50:11 PM (Jerusalem Standard Time, UTC+02:00)
Very hard not to notice that you're *logged in* is one thing. It's almost impossible to figure this out when you're *not* logged in, and it's even harder to find a "sign in" button (in fact, I had to try one of the account options just to get a login dialog).
Name
E-mail
Home page

Comment (Some html is allowed: a@href@title, b, blockquote@cite, em, i, strike, strong, sub, super, u) where the @ means "attribute." For example, you can use <a href="" title=""> or <blockquote cite="Scott">.  

Live Comment Preview