Explaining the redesign
One problem I’ve found with some of my clients is when a business expands, changes or even moves from its original focus, no thought is put into how this will affect the website. Even if the client’s main business area is through its website! So it was quite refreshing to see that Amazon have overhauled their website, and more so to see that they’d explained why - how often do customers visit a familiar website only to find it’s been completely altered? And how often might this bother, confuse, or even put off that customer?
Amazon’s main point is that their business has shifted from just selling books, to selling multitudes of different items and also hosting items from private sellers in the Amazon Marketplace - so an overhaul of their ever-growing navigation system and departments was obviously needed.
I like how they’ve tackled it - outside of the home page, the main nav bar neatly slides away until needed, and (powered by Ajax I think?) it gracefully opens on mouseover to reveal the departments and inner menus. Very nice, and very easy to figure out.
