Login – Dan Dreifort

Image representing Amazon as depicted in Crunc... — Image via CrunchBase

Dear Amazon Usability Team,

1. I want to stay logged in so that 1-Click ordering is really one click. In the past, if I wanted something from Amazon, I would pop open my browser and I was conveniently already signed in to Amazon. This allowed me to 1-Click order on the fly and enabled me to include only Amazon Prime items in search results. (UPDATE: This is now fixed.)

The Amazon rep with whom I just spoke says that Amazon no longer allows users to remain logged in and that I must login anew with each browser start. She said this policy ensures greater security. I like security, but I’m also a fan of usability.

2. The bigger (or at least as big), usability problem is that, assuming I’m not signed in, (you know, for security), when I’ve navigated to a product I want to purchase, I have to login. I click “sign in” and then I am not taken back to the page whereon I clicked “sign in” but am instead taken to a page containing some text and a button to “continue shopping”. That takes me back to the item, but worse still is the example of searching. I get the results how I want, except that I want to limit my results to Amazon Prime eligible items. So I sign in only to be taken to a “Your Amazon.com” page with “Featured Recommendations” none of which were in the results page I just recently left. (Passive voice intentional.) (UPDATE: This is also now fixed.)

Clearly this is not what the shopper wants and is therefore not what Amazon wants.

We have to click the back button a few times to get where we want to be. Annoying.

Why create a barrier to the sale? How many sales are lost b/c of frustration from 1 and 2 alone?

To be fair, that same Amazon representative loved my usability feedback on this one.

Sign In For Amazon Prime Search Results?

I know it’s not as secure, but consider allowing me to stay logged in from session to session so that I don’t have to sign in every time I’m shopping just to see Amazon Prime eligible items in my search results. Why do I need to sign in to sort by Prime in the first place?! (UPDATE: This is also, also now fixed.)

And if you can’t do that, at least ensure that if I’m on a search results page or an item page when I click “sign in”, that after I’m logged in, I’m returned to that page immediately so I can make the decision and buy something.

These two usability improvements should easily be worth a few million dollars every year for Amazon.

You’re welcome. No charge 😉

Dan Dreifort consults on usability and search. He also makes music. Dan Dreifort is for scuba.

Google places a real live email link to pat@example.com on the Google account login screen. Though I’m sure it’s intended to improve usability it has the opposite effect. They placed the pat@example.com link smack dab in between the email (login/username) field and the password field. Keyboard savvy users normally use the tab key to move from one field to another. And if you save your login credentials in your browser, you can just type the first few letters of the username into the correct field, hit tab and then hit enter. Following that standard keyboard login procedure on Google’s page doesn’t log you in; it brings up a fresh message in your default mail program addressed to pat@example.com. Lame.

Stylish Fix for pat@example.com Google Annoyance

If you don’t use Firefox, you should. (Well, Chrome‘s OK, I guess.) This fix only works for Firefox. Install Stylish – it’s a great add-on that allows you to easily fix broken pages… like google.com! You’ll need to restart Firefox.

Then install this pat@example.com Stylish style I just made. You’re done.

My other stylish offering to fix Reddit

I used to like digg.com but then they kept “improving” things. I stopped liking Digg. I’d poked around on reddit.com before but it’s so hideous that usability suffers. I found some decent Stylish options to fix things but they weren’t quite right. So I tweaked some existing reddit Stylish styles to make the site more than bearable. If you use Reddit, try my Reddit Stylish effort.

Dan Dreifort helps businesses with usability and search. He enjoys traveling, sugar, fat, scuba, making music, writing blurbs about himself in the third person, whining and other stuff too.

Sign In For Amazon Prime Search Results?

Share this:

Like this:

Stylish Fix for pat@example.com Google Annoyance

My other stylish offering to fix Reddit

Share this:

Like this: