Poll of the Day > I know Amazon overall does a lot of cutting-edge things, but their shopping site

(+) Yeah! (+)

still feels to me in a lot of ways like it's stuck with a lot of early 2000's design ideas. Not that I know what's better... maybe all shopping sites are still like this. Did they just happen to get that area of web design right in the early days, or did everyone just stop giving a shit about modernizing it?

I think it's a little bit of both, anyway. Like the actual search/results interface hasn't changed much, but I don't think it needs to. But look at the my account settings, it's just a huge clusterfuck of options in a very plain list

I'm not sure. I care much more about functionality. I think the Nintendo site looks nice. I fucking think it's garbage though
---

It's a site for buying things. I want to see images of the thing, descriptions of the thing, and customer reviews for the thing.
Background videos, redundant widgets, social-network nags, page elements moving around, and stock photos of pretty people facing slightly right with crossed arms, serve no useful purpose while buying the thing

I love the Amazon site. I buy shit, the shit ships, I open the shit, hurray

Nothing more, nothing less

SteamedHams posted...

still feels to me in a lot of ways like it's stuck with a lot of early 2000's design ideas. Not that I know what's better... maybe all shopping sites are still like this. Did they just happen to get that area of web design right in the early days, or did everyone just stop giving a shit about modernizing it?

I'd much rather have a site that is simplistic design a la years ago than one that constantly chases whatever the current cutting-edge trend happens to be, and winds up being absolutely un-navigatable because of it.

It's part of why I fucking loathe Microsoft's constant attempts to "modernize" the menu systems of all of their products for cross-play purposes, which generally just results in incredibly shitty menus for both the Xbox and Windows PCs. Way too much these days seems like complexity for complexity's sake, rather than elegant design.


---

HCI has definitely come a long way since the 2000s so I can appreciate gripes over crappy front ends.

What I find humorous is that I'm looking at my best buy spam for the first time, they're really getting competitive with pricing. I oftentimes can find items at best buy during a sale for up to half of what it is being sold for by the big online retailers.

You are really paying a lot for the convenience these days.
---

What ways do you think it could be modernized?

Ive never felt this way towards their site
---

If it ain't broke, don't fix it
---

Mead posted...

Ive never felt this way towards their site

To be fair, considering most of us are still on GameFAQs, presumably there aren't going to be a lot of futurists demanding bleeding-edge GUIs here.


---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Mead posted...

Ive never felt this way towards their site

To be fair, considering most of us are still on GameFAQs, presumably there aren't going to be a lot of futurists demanding bleeding-edge GUIs here.

Thats a good point
---

Nothing wrong with their website.
---

It's simple and clean. Leave it alone.
---

I hate a lot of modern "shopping" sites because all the fluff they add. Amazon keeps it simple, I like that.

Spend the money on making sure I get my shit, not on a flashy store front.
---

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'd much rather have a site that is simplistic design a la years ago than one that constantly chases whatever the current cutting-edge trend happens to be, and winds up being absolutely un-navigatable because of it.

It's part of why I f***ing loathe Microsoft's constant attempts to "modernize" the menu systems of all of their products for cross-play purposes, which generally just results in incredibly s***ty menus for both the Xbox and Windows PCs. Way too much these days seems like complexity for complexity's sake, rather than elegant design.

I agree. Menus used to be so much easier to find whatever setting or system you were looking for. Now it's a convoluted mess. Things are harder to find unless you already know where it is and a lot of shit doesn't even make sense for it to under the heading that it's been placed under.

I'll absolutely take Amazon's plain, straight forward and common sense layers for the my account menu over most other modern menu setups. I shouldn't have to use Google to find where a particular setting or option happens to be stuck. I should be able to easily find it just by looking at the menu.


---