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The website hasn´t changed and notably hasn´t improved in over a decade. The customer feedback has gone from being the reference for buying products to only be

by neffy 7y ago

The website hasn´t changed and notably hasn´t improved in over a decade. The customer feedback has gone from being the reference for buying products to only being able to trust the 1 star reviews. It´s flooded with stuff relayed from China, and consequently its cheaper to just buy direct from China. Here in the UK we have creepy corporate amazon stakhanovite "we just love pushing these parcels" ads to endure all christmas. Apparently one of the workers brings in cakes for her colleagues every Tuesday - oh, Amazon, the company that can´t even put food for its underpaid and overworked employees in the company break rooms. What a wonderful world.

paxys 7y ago
Google's website hasn't changed either, and neither has HN. And that's a good thing. Nothing drives customers away faster than change for change's sake and constant pointless redesigns.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  Except the search page has changed, just well. Within the last few years they moved the footer to stick to the bottom of the page and made the buttons flatter. https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com
- dgemm 7y ago
  Google does this constantly with Gmail, calendar, Android, and so on.
- blululu 7y ago
  Google’s homepage has changed but very slightly. For instance voice input options, removing ‘I’m feeling lucky’ and the addition of profiles/account info. But it’s a pretty minimalist page, and big redesign is usually a bad idea since they are liable to piss off your most loyal and dedicated customers/users/subscribers.
RijilV 7y ago
That’s because Amazon knows retail is already dead. Either they get beat out by a competitor or the fed breaks up the company and retail is doomed without the integration. AWS is just quietly milking the cash out of retail and funding the science projects.
- ztratar 7y ago
  This is a preposterous statement. "Retail is already dead?" By what metric. Please enlighten us how people buying things is not a massive lever to the economy and Amazon's success?
- manigandham 7y ago
  Retail is far from dead with just about every retailer reporting record sales and consumer confidence remaining high. Amazon has plenty marketshare to take, whether as a monolithic organization or several independent companies.
  - nine_k 7y ago
    Retail as a business is fine. Amazon's retail may be slowly dying, overcome with fakes, razor-thin margins, dwindling faith of buyers, and a looming anti-trust investigation. The retail department is at some risk of downsizing back to mostly books. It would be wise for them to concentrate on stuff that goes well: AWS, Alexa.
    - manigandham 7y ago
      Downsizing back to books? That goes against every available metric. Amazon retail is growing like crazy. They have more retail channels opening up beyond the main ecommerce store and they're investing 1.5B for 1-day delivery (while trivially putting Fedex on death watch as a side effect). The only serious competition they have is Walmart which has hit on groceries as a magic bullet, and Target. Fakes are not as big of a problem as HN makes it seem. Margins only help Amazon beat its competitors. And there's nothing antitrust can do since there's no monopoly on retail outlets, people want to shop there by choice.
celticmusic 7y ago
I don't want Amazon's website to change. It works well as it is, I certainly never find myself wanting something it doesn't currently do.
- heavyset_go 7y ago
  > It works well as it is Search is horribly broken, sorting is broken, ratings are broken, products are broken up into categories that don't make sense and searching and sorting between categories is broken.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    You just articulated basically every complaint I have about buying anything from Amazon. It seems unarguably true that I can’t buy anything from them if I can’t find it. So, why is it so hard to search for anything I don’t already know the exact name of?
    - heavyset_go 7y ago
      > It seems unarguably true that I can’t buy anything from them if I can’t find it. Most people are looking for the best value they can get at the lowest price they can find. Amazon's site makes that process difficult and nearly impossible. I can only speculate as to why that is.
    - krustyburger 7y ago
      So much of the result of a search is now explicitly advertising. Amazon now has a new incentive to sell ads and display those ads as often as possible, whereas before their only goal was to return relevant results to the customer making the search.
      - pmiller2 7y ago
        You can say the same about Google search, yet their organic results are still quite relevant. Isn’t Amazon supposed to be focusing on the customer?
naravara 7y ago
I think Amazon as a store is probably being deprioritized in favor of Amazon as a giant e-commerce facilitator that handles all the payment processing and backend logistics. The consequence has been ruining the storefront experience, but that’s not really what they care about anymore.

by neffy 7y ago

paxys 7y ago

Google's website hasn't changed either, and neither has HN. And that's a good thing. Nothing drives customers away faster than change for change's sake and constant pointless redesigns.

iudqnolq 7y ago
Except the search page has changed, just well. Within the last few years they moved the footer to stick to the bottom of the page and made the buttons flatter. https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com https://web.archive.org/web/*/google.com
dgemm 7y ago
Google does this constantly with Gmail, calendar, Android, and so on.
blululu 7y ago
Google’s homepage has changed but very slightly. For instance voice input options, removing ‘I’m feeling lucky’ and the addition of profiles/account info. But it’s a pretty minimalist page, and big redesign is usually a bad idea since they are liable to piss off your most loyal and dedicated customers/users/subscribers.

RijilV 7y ago

That’s because Amazon knows retail is already dead. Either they get beat out by a competitor or the fed breaks up the company and retail is doomed without the integration. AWS is just quietly milking the cash out of retail and funding the science projects.

ztratar 7y ago
This is a preposterous statement. "Retail is already dead?" By what metric. Please enlighten us how people buying things is not a massive lever to the economy and Amazon's success?
manigandham 7y ago
Retail is far from dead with just about every retailer reporting record sales and consumer confidence remaining high. Amazon has plenty marketshare to take, whether as a monolithic organization or several independent companies.
- nine_k 7y ago
  Retail as a business is fine. Amazon's retail may be slowly dying, overcome with fakes, razor-thin margins, dwindling faith of buyers, and a looming anti-trust investigation. The retail department is at some risk of downsizing back to mostly books. It would be wise for them to concentrate on stuff that goes well: AWS, Alexa.
  - manigandham 7y ago
    Downsizing back to books? That goes against every available metric. Amazon retail is growing like crazy. They have more retail channels opening up beyond the main ecommerce store and they're investing 1.5B for 1-day delivery (while trivially putting Fedex on death watch as a side effect). The only serious competition they have is Walmart which has hit on groceries as a magic bullet, and Target. Fakes are not as big of a problem as HN makes it seem. Margins only help Amazon beat its competitors. And there's nothing antitrust can do since there's no monopoly on retail outlets, people want to shop there by choice.

celticmusic 7y ago

I don't want Amazon's website to change. It works well as it is, I certainly never find myself wanting something it doesn't currently do.

heavyset_go 7y ago
> It works well as it is Search is horribly broken, sorting is broken, ratings are broken, products are broken up into categories that don't make sense and searching and sorting between categories is broken.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  You just articulated basically every complaint I have about buying anything from Amazon. It seems unarguably true that I can’t buy anything from them if I can’t find it. So, why is it so hard to search for anything I don’t already know the exact name of?
  - heavyset_go 7y ago
    > It seems unarguably true that I can’t buy anything from them if I can’t find it. Most people are looking for the best value they can get at the lowest price they can find. Amazon's site makes that process difficult and nearly impossible. I can only speculate as to why that is.
  - krustyburger 7y ago
    So much of the result of a search is now explicitly advertising. Amazon now has a new incentive to sell ads and display those ads as often as possible, whereas before their only goal was to return relevant results to the customer making the search.
    - pmiller2 7y ago
      You can say the same about Google search, yet their organic results are still quite relevant. Isn’t Amazon supposed to be focusing on the customer?

naravara 7y ago

I think Amazon as a store is probably being deprioritized in favor of Amazon as a giant e-commerce facilitator that handles all the payment processing and backend logistics. The consequence has been ruining the storefront experience, but that’s not really what they care about anymore.