A site I spend a lot of time on is www.amazon.com. I am obsessed with online shopping and they make it so easy to get everything I need (and don’t need!). Here is a brief evaluation of the site from my perspective.
Structure
For being a very large website, the structure is intuitive and easy to follow. While they don’t have the typical “About Us” page, their very clear focus is showcasing their products and services and they do a fabulous job. There is a menu bar across the top with the most popular pages, as well as a “hamburger” menu you can click in the top left with even more options.
The major drawback that is also irritating is trying to find how to contact them. On the main page there is a navigation link in the menu for customer service, and this takes you to another page with numerous options. They allow you to fix a lot of problems utilizing their site tools, but it is challenging to get in touch with an actual person.
Content
Amazon contains an enormous amount of content, and in my opinion it is categorized very well in the built in menus. There is also a really good search function that I use more often than not, and I have never had trouble finding exactly what I was looking for using the search. They also have new content constantly, especially around the holidays. One feature I really like is how they categorize gifts by the type of person you are shopping for. This makes it a lot easier to shop for items relevant to your mother, grandmother, tech savvy friend, etc. I also love that the site is offered in a multitude of languages, and changing the set language is very easily accomplished by hovering over the flag to the right of the search bar.
Design
The design is unobtrusive and uses a simple color palette of white, gray, dark blue, and light orange. The product listings add a lot of color as well, so their choices of colors enhance the appeal of the products without being overpowering. They have chosen to use sans serif fonts from what I can tell, and the fonts appear consistent throughout the site. The graphics and imagery are focused around their product offerings so contribute really well to the purpose of the site. The layout is visually really busy, but they do have so much content I feel it is virtually impossible to not make it look busy.
Behavior
The site behaves as expected, with hyperlinks changing from light blue to an underlined orange when the user hovers over them. All of the images are also clickable and take you to the respective product pages. The menu bar also displays a white box around each menu item as you hover over.
