Rethinking Amazon.com

I find the book The Elements of User Experience — Jesse James Garrett very attractive and fundamental for me to be a good UX designer in the future, in which the five basic planes of a product are introduced and explained using vivid examples and easy to understand narration, giving me a scientific way of reviewing our daily-use products and my own works.
After reading this book, I have many questions to be answered or further illustrated, some are listed below, like:
- Why “A better approach is to have work on each plane finish before work on the next can finish” ? I believe this will cause more vague and rework during the progress.
- Why there is a distinction of informational and functional product? I find it hard to define many websites cause they may fall into both sides, like I will take Facebook as a new website and a social communication tool.
- Although this book is about website design, can I say that most of the principles and elements also apply to mobile app design?
- What’s the relationship between technology and UX?
- How to define success metrics for different websites?
I will try to figure out the answers through the rest of my study.
With the elements of user experience, I would like to analyse the one fo the biggest Internet retailer — amazon.com — using this five planes, which are:
- The Surface Plane
- The Skeleton Plane
- The Structure Plane
- The Scope Plane
- The Strategy Plane
The Strategy Plane
For most of the e-commerce websites and companies, I believe that their strategy is to maximize the benefits form selling items to users, together with providing them a delight mood and experience through the whole process so that they will come and buy the next time.
As we all know, amazon was an online bookstore at first, then extended to sell almost all kinds of stuffs, but still the book selling is of the best, even the e-reader Kindle was made for an alternative way of reading books. Therefore I suggest that their strategy could also include placing better resources on their wonderful online bookstore in order to attract more users to purchase other kinds of items.
It’s hard to identify the very specific users of amazon, for the reason that it is a widely-used and popular website in all around the world, therefore, designing for users form different culture is vital, or trying to find out a universal solution. For me, the website is easy to understand, both amazon.com or amazon.com.cn, without any abstract design, and I can definitely achieve my needs every time I want to make purchases.
The Scope Plane
The strategy of amazon is to help users get the items they want, and by achieving this, it allows users to browse items if they just want to look around, or search for an item if they know exactly their needs. More items are showed in recommendations, according to searching and buying records, together in browsing history. These functions, in my opinion, are quit effective in reaching more potential or actual deals.
Items are described clearly, with beautiful and professional images, exact metrics and other users’ reviews, so that everyone new to the item can have a better understanding. After users are able to find an ideal item, they have the choice to choose color, size and purchase it, or add to a wishlist, etc. Then can even ask their personal questions to other buyers, which is a very sweet and thoughtful idea for users.
After an order has been places, users are able to view, tract or cancel the item, preventing users from buying the item by mistake.
Language used in the website is in a friendly tone, making users feel like dealing with a helpful salesman, like “Thank you, your order has been places” after a purchase, or “ Tian, we’re sorry to see you go.” if I end the membership. This kind of tone is helpful in building up a warm atmosphere for users. But I also find another term a little bit unfriendly to me, that is the “your” in your account and your” orders, etc, I would prefer it to be “my” for a closer feel.
The Structure Plane
Using a cart icon to represent the shopping bag is instinct for users to understand that their items are inside there, especially after the number above the cart added one after I add something into it. This design method is great to fit the users conceptual models.
For the interaction design, I always find it smooth and friendly, except for the time when I want to end my membership. I have to click for four times so that I can finally make it work, which is very disappointing for me. Understandably it is good for business, but indeed hard for users.
The amazon website is a example of hierarchical structure, the parent node is the homepage, form where users can go to a secondary page of department list, and finally into the detailed page. Or they can go directly into the detailed page to view an item.
I thins this kind of structure is reasonable, which has something in common with finding an item in a real department store: we go into the store, look for the department of the item, compare different items and make a decision. Therefore users will not get confused even when they first get to the website.
The Skeleton Plane
Amazon has great interface design. When users arrive at the detailed page, they will be attracted by the image first, read the description, and then notice the important “Add to chart” button and “Buy now with one-click” button, clarifying them the important feature at the top of the page.

For the navigation design, there is a global navigation bar on the top of the page, and items are placed with priority. It is easy to be reached no matter where users are inside the website. Drop-down lists are used to represent the relationship between different elements in it, which is very clear to me to browse.

For the information design, it is in great detail. Take the item page for an example again, the content are divided into different parts like the basic info, the detailed info(usually pretty long), comparison of different items, customer questions & answers, customer questions & answers and further recommendations. However, after reading the whole page, users will be equipped with enough knowledge of decided whether the item is their wish or not, but they will have to roll a long way back to the top and click “Buy”, and there are no links to navigate users through this long page, which I believe can be improved in the future.
The Surface Plane
The grid-based layout is widely used in amazon, making the whole page looks clear and uniform. More images are used other than words, which is time-saving and instinctive for users to locate to the entrance they want.

Colors are used in a traditional but functional way — dark blue for navigation bar and vivid orange for call to action button. Dark blue shows a sense of reliability to users and vivid orange can attract attentions. But in my own opinion, it will be more attractive and fashion to choose some light colors, like white and light blue.

In a word, I think amazon is basically a user-friendly and easy-to-use website, based on the five basic planes of user experience and we can learn a lot from it.
Reference
- The Elements of User Experience — Jesse James Garrett
- Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)
- Amazon amazon.com
