ABE's emails to booksellers
Archive: Online bookselling
Some changes can only be explained by assuming that a company hired a consultant and he shifted things about simply to be able to acclaim that work had been accomplished and value provided. Like the people who sell bottled tap water under fancy labels.
A prior redesign of ABE's emails to booksellers had moved the link for processing the order way down the page. The first link you saw was the one you'd click on if you had decided to refuse the order or the customer changed his mind. Took me weeks to get used to that and I'd often click the wrong link anyway. The arrangement was so damned wrongheaded.
A few days ago ABE's emails to sellers have the proper link first and both links near the top of the email. A small thing but it made me happy.
2 · Posted by: Richard on April 19, 2004 05:52 PM
ABE is now big enough to pay for usability testing as Amazon has. Amazon's layout may be boring but they've spent a fortune making sure that it works.
3 · Posted by: Steven on July 13, 2004 02:47 PM
I wanted to put in a contrary opinion about Amazon.com's layout usability. I have found it noticably weak in providing readily accessible shipping cost information. (I both purchase and sell books online.) I usually find myself making a choice between direct purchases (found via bookfinder) and sites like Amazon based on the shipping charges.
Steven
Feel free to share your feelings about ABE's emails to booksellers. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard
1 · Posted by: Scott Zrubek on April 19, 2004 10:34 AM
ABE has also changed the layout of the display of want lists on their site. The new layout, while more visually appealling, is nigh unusable.
The most important thing to me is the author's name. Apparently to the designer of the new layout, the most important thing is the want number. Where the information used to be displayed on one line, making it readily scannable, it is now on at least 3 lines. This makes it very difficult to grasp the information in an instant.
Yes, I've already ranted at ABE about this.