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Amazon Business

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Re: Amazon Business

#31

Post by thaumasiotes »

keenerd wrote: post #27
IgorPartola wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so unclear here? This is the store brand, and it is often times nicer than competition at the price. I have an AB branded camera bag, and it's great. I have also bought cables, and other small accessories from them and they have been of good quality. If I need a monitor arm and can get one for $100 from Amazon or $140 from another manufacturer I wouldn't think twice and just get the AB one.

Basics was launched to compete with the likes of Monoprice. And due to the pricing structure of FBA, it doesn't make much sense for 3rd parties to sell items through Amazon for under $10. The majority of Basics items are inexpensive to take advantage of this. Almost every item in the Basics catalog are items that a person will buy at least once a year. How many copper fire pits do you think the average person buys pe…

My Basics purchases so far: mouse, bluetooth keyboard, capacitive stylus, travel case for a portable hard drive, HDMI cable, USB extension cable, USB hub.

Here's the first page of results if I search Amazon for "amazonbasics": "portable power bank", USB--Lightning cable (6 feet) (I assume this is for connecting an iPhone to a USB port?), 67-inch monopod, bluetooth "audio receiver", travel case for small electronics, dual monitors mounting arm, USB wall charger, laptop backpack, microUSB--Lightning adapter, 24 pack of microfiber cleaning cloths, 8-pack of AA rechargeable batteries, USB--Lightning cable (3 feet), GoPro carrying case, double rod freestanding closet, large portable bluetooth speaker, 12 pairs of banana plugs (6 red, 6 black).

None of those, except possibly the cleaning cloths, are items I'd expect someone to buy once a year.

Re: Amazon Business

#32

Post by cakoose »

samsol wrote: post #25
nearengine wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a table-based layout, and the navigation is a single image with maps. Pretty incredible to see in production on Amazon in 2015.

Amazon clearly knows that it is not the beauty of html behind the page that will make this initiative successful OR cause it to fail . At the end of the day, these images are used to get the message across and its Just doing that . That's what it is.. Nothing beyond it.

It's not just the behind-the-scenes stuff that's ugly. Whatever they used to render the text is much worse than what my browser does. And there's no mouse hover changes. And you can't copy/paste the text. Following best practices would have gotten them a long tail of benefits for free.

Sure, the page gets the message across, but I think even non-technical people are at least subliminally aware of the fact that there's something low-quality going on.

If some smaller website did this it wouldn't be as surprising. It's just that this seems like an amateur mistake from a company that we all assumed to have competence in web design.

Re: Amazon Business

#33

Post by richardw »

I've long wondered about the streamlining benefits of company Amazon accounts. Just shipping savings would be huge, especially to large foreign companies whose staff receive many packages a day.

Re: Amazon Business

#34

Post by sukilot »

discodave wrote: post #23
mmahemoff wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A multi-user business account is even bigger when you consider this is more than just the sale of physical products. It's also computing services via AWS, hiring remote workers via Mech Turk, and books+apps+other virtual goods via Kindle/App marketplace. Amazon just launched local services too, so this could let an authorised employee hire contractors under a managed, audited, workflow. (I don't know if all of those…

Source for AWS and MTurk?

AWS has had muti-user accounts for 5 years.

Re: Amazon Business

#35

Post by sukilot »

hobs wrote: post #29
vosper wrote: post #7

Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

Like most Amazon services, its a "will this work and make money, backfill if needed." I have nothing against big A, they often use this strategy to try a bunch of stuff out and see if it works, almost always at a loss, and see how they can make money off of it. Anyone who has looked into Glacier (for instance) will see that Amazon probably didnt buy a bunch of crazy robots, but is more likely selling EC2 at a loss to…

Crazy robots? Isn't Glacier just tape storage? Big companies use regular robots for that.

Re: Amazon Business

#36

Post by sukilot »

veidr wrote: post #28
vosper wrote: post #7

Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

Seriously, look at the typographic alignment in the very first word of this paragraph (which happens to be "Amazon"): http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/img15/amazon-busi... It has always seemed freaky to me that Amazon still uses images for paragraphs of text. I have assumed it is because the real-world web is more broken than I know.

Amazon has an incredibly tightly packed homepage with images and text. that's an obscene challenge to layout without obscuring content or missing up proportions. The inside pages use regular layout and are more liberal

Re: Amazon Business

#37

Post by sukilot »

okbake wrote: post #20
vosper wrote: post #7

Unconstructive nitpick: the text quality in the images on that page is awful. Very aliased, and the letters seem kind of randomly sized and kerned. It's quite strange.

Yeah, that stood out to me too. I feel like these were design proofs that someone just threw on the page instead of building them out. Possibly someone who doesn't do much web dev. Even the markup is odd: tables with 's between them for the image rows and each image link is using an image that spans the entire image instead of just using an anchor.

Amazon launched years before CSS2. If it ain't broke...

Re: Amazon Business

#38

Post by fragmede »

sukilot wrote: post #35
hobs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most Amazon services, its a "will this work and make money, backfill if needed." I have nothing against big A, they often use this strategy to try a bunch of stuff out and see if it works, almost always at a loss, and see how they can make money off of it. Anyone who has looked into Glacier (for instance) will see that Amazon probably didnt buy a bunch of crazy robots, but is more likely selling EC2 at a loss to…

Crazy robots? Isn't Glacier just tape storage? Big companies use regular robots for that.

Amazon hasn't publicly stated what technology Glacier is based on.

It's been speculated that instead of throwing out previous generation AWS hardware, they're simply repurposing then into cheap storage nodes for Glacier.

Re: Amazon Business

#39

Post by r00fus »

sukilot wrote: post #36
veidr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, look at the typographic alignment in the very first word of this paragraph (which happens to be "Amazon"): http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/img15/amazon-busi... It has always seemed freaky to me that Amazon still uses images for paragraphs of text. I have assumed it is because the real-world web is more broken than I know.

Amazon has an incredibly tightly packed homepage with images and text. that's an obscene challenge to layout without obscuring content or missing up proportions. The inside pages use regular layout and are more liberal

Luckily for us, their iOS app and mobile browser experience is really nice (only I can't see some comment metadata like up/downvotes).

Only time I visit Amazon on a desktop is when I happen to deep-link into a product page from a review site.

Re: Amazon Business

#40

Post by sukilot »

cakoose wrote: post #32
samsol wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon clearly knows that it is not the beauty of html behind the page that will make this initiative successful OR cause it to fail . At the end of the day, these images are used to get the message across and its Just doing that . That's what it is.. Nothing beyond it.

It's not just the behind-the-scenes stuff that's ugly. Whatever they used to render the text is much worse than what my browser does. And there's no mouse hover changes. And you can't copy/paste the text. Following best practices would have gotten them a long tail of benefits for free. Sure, the page gets the message across, but I think even non-technical people are at least subliminally aware of the fact that there'…

Amazon is a store, not a website design luxury showcase. They aim to deliver the most products at the lowest prices with reliable delivery, and they aren't selling copy-pasteable ad copy. They rte quite competent in their web design.
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