Amazon.com: Work In Progress 08-16-2004
I recently ordered a few books from Amazon and like many people have found them to be a great online store. While waiting for my packages to arrive I decided to check the status of my delivery. A lagged page load brought to my attention a few problems with Amazon and subsequently others upon investigation.
There is an ALTernative?
Amazon has been praised by many critics as providing users with one of the best user experiences and I agree with this statement on most levels. But there are still many major problems which have simple solutions that lurk throughout the site, even the home page.
On this occasion I simply wanted to quickly get to the package tracking page. Unfortunately Amazon uses an excessive amount of images as their action buttons. Typically if this is the case the designer can at least aid the user by using image alt attributes. But for Amazon, the use of alt attributes is sporadic and provide little information if any at all. (Accompanying Screenshot)
Helping to provide little help
For such a major online retailer I found it shocking that Amazon had little care for accessibility. Users with disabilities may be a small demographic in terms of sales but there are simple measures which can be taken to provide this user base with the ability to actually use the site and make purchases. Not to mention the fact that in this case, accessibility features can help the “average” user as well.
This revelation brought me to Amazon’s help section, in search of finding their accessibility features, if any even existed. At first glance the information I sought was not in their list of common questions or categories. Luckily there is a prominent search box for me to search Amazon’s help section. Upon searching for the term “accessibility” I was left with no results. The lack of results wasn’t my main problem, it was more the fact that Amazon provided little help in trying to get me back on track. Also at the same time attempting to get me to purchase their top selling wares. At this point I’m a confused user and Amazon has led me off course of finding the help I need. (Accompanying Screenshot)
37Signals spoke of this matter in their book Defensive Design for the Web:
Critical content shouldn’t be obstructed by ads or promotional offerings. This is especially true for error message screens and other crisis points. Ad revenues are important, but your site will lose money if they come at the expense of driving customers away for good.
Amazon has done a lot of innovate work with the web medium for e-commerce, but there is still a lot that can be done. In order for Amazon to remain the top online retailer they need to cater to their users in the best way possible.