The home page of this retail website, created by Amazon.com, that mainly sells shoes and handbags, begins with six main navigation links. Each link leads to another navigation system that allows you to narrow your “search” of what you are shopping for. Therefore, the groups make perfect sense. There is a hierarchy among the navigation systems, since one appears only after you click on one of the main navigation links. The second set of navigation links also has the headline “Narrow By,” which clearly tells the user that it is secondary to the main link. The site was designed this way to allow a user to be able to narrow down the list of items they see on a page, which conveniently filters out those that the user would not like to see.
The main navigation remains in the same place throughout the architecture of the site, which seems pretty complex (not flat). Once you get into the third level of the site, which is where you actually view a specific item, the second navigation system disappears. Instead, another set of navigation appears where you can look through all the other items. This is a logical way of designing this site, because if you still had the opportunity to narrow your search for an item, the one you are currently looking at may not be included in the search, which raises the issue of how to go about displaying the item that was displayed before narrowing down the search…a blank image?
The main links have both a different rollover and selected state. The second navigation system varies; the first set of secondary links have only a rollover state, but this is because as soon as you click on one of them, it brings up another list of links and creates a breadcrumb right above this list. Therefore, a selected state is not necessary. Others have a rollover and selected state; either way, they made sure the user will always know where they are within the architecture of the site, unless they are viewing a particular item. However, shoppers can soon figure out where they are at by scrolling down and looking at the breadcrumbs given under the “Look for similar items by category” headline. If not, shoppers should not be able to miss the “Continue shopping” button that takes them back to the page that populated the list of similar items. Shoppers should also be able to return to the home page at any time by clicking on the “endless” icon strategically placed on the top left-hand corner.
I mentioned earlier that the site did not seem to be flat. This comes along with the fact that there are links that appear and disappear, meaning you can’t access any page within the site any time you would like to. For a website like this, where it has hundreds of items, this is a good thing, since it forces shoppers to narrow down the list of what they look at to buy. This keeps the site from giving too much information all at once. In general, the site does not have that many pages; there is basically the home page, the next page with the secondary links, which narrows your search down, then a page which displays the item you want to take a closer look at, and then the various “buying” pages, such as the “view shopping cart” page and the “purchase” pages which takes you through the step of actually buying items you selected. Due to the sheer nature of the website, and there being hundreds of merchandise available for sale, there are a lot of different pages, therefore having a very deep architecture.
The hierarchy of the typography is apparent; they made good use of size, weight, contrast, alignment, and lines to separate content and make others more prominent than the others. The way the text is arranged is very clean, and the only way to improve it would be to kern out the text for the measurements, which seems a bit scrunched together compared to the rest of the text on the page when looking at a specific item. The labels of the navigation are very clear, seeing how they are very specific (Women’s Shoes, Men’s Shoes, Kid’s Shoes, Bags & Accessories, Sale, Designer).
The structure of the pages vary, but this is due to the fact that there are navigation systems that appear and disappear, and shoppers are very quick to get used to it, since the website itself was designed to be very interactive. The sections of each page change throughout the website. This was probably to make the shopper’s experience smooth and easy; as I pointed out earlier, everything was executed logically, so even this variety makes sense to shoppers.
On any given page, the focal point is usually a photo of an item. This is because of the shape and balance. The photo(s) offset the amount of text on a given page, and contrasts greatly from the square elements (buttons, navigation, boxes that contain information) on a given page. The photos definitely add to the design of the site, seeing how they are the main attraction to the website, the items themselves. I do not want to see any more photos than necessary, seeing how they have multiple (and by multiple, I mean more than just two or three) views for each item. There are many symbols used, such as the conventional arrows and phone. The website makes clever use of color tiles under the color family (secondary links), allowing people to narrow their search of shoes or bags by visually seeing the color, rather than by text. To aid those who are color blind, these tiles have a rollover state where one can see a tag with the color written out. These symbols did not take long to understand.
On any given page, there are at most, four colors used, white being the background and the color of text on the main navigation buttons. The navigation buttons themselves are tan, with a rollover state that darkens it and a selected state that transforms them into a purple button. Borders, lines, shaded and subtle gradient boxes are used to separate content on the page. These colors were chosen to distance itself from Amazon.com, and to give off a more “sophisticated” vibe to the website and hence, to the merchandise offered on it.
You basically navigate through this retail website by “searching” and narrowing down what you are looking for, but there is also a search feature in which you type in to yield results rather than by clicking. You can be pretty specific, and takes you instantly to the same page you would have been able to get to by using the navigation links. A feature I find very useful is the ability to narrow down your search by brand. Furthermore, the secondary navigation system also populates a list of brands you can narrow it down by. Therefore, you are not left with trying to guess which brands will be available on this website or not; it is all given to you in a list format. This website was created with interactivity in mind. Therefore, there was nothing confusing about the website. One way to improve it would be to simply offer more items.
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