User Experience: Going once, twice, sold! March 31, 1999 On March 25, I saw a new sidebar in a News.Com story that was dropped prominently into the layout with links to other CNET subsites. News.Com placed a generic sidebar about travel in an article talking about the plans of online travel agencies expanding into cruises and tours. The sidebar was connected with CNET's plans to go vertical and aggregate content. But when does a vertical linking opportunity conflict with user experience? Amazon opens an auction subsite Yesterday Amazon decided to explore this with their new auction subsite and Jakob Nielsen spotted another vertical manoeuvre at play. Amazon has an enormous directory of products that splits up under four categories: books, CDs, videos and gifts. Amazon has leveraged all the product pages in those categories to plug their new site with links to items that are up for auction. Jakob Nielsen: "Instead of being an optimal book-buying user interface, Amazon now forces users to scroll through more than an inch of irrelevant blurbs for their online auctions that have no relation to the book the user is looking for."

Well in December 1998, Amazon used the same space that they are now plugging the auction to tell users what shipping methods were available to ship by December 24 in the US. So while browsing products at Amazon, users could plan their order to fit in with a fixed delivery schedule and varying shipping methods and product availability. Implementation of the auction links on Amazon Under the four categories there are some distinctions in how the auction links are handled. The music category seems to link to CDs being auctioned, but with links to CDs that have no connection to the CD being looked at. Videos and books get the plush toys and miscellaneous auction links. While the gift section for some reason has decided the product information is more important than vertical links by placing the auction links near the bottom of the page. Maybe Amazon should follow the lead of OnSale and place their live auction links inside a bannner advertisement on another site. Reprise: Auction Sidebar, April 4, 1999. Amazon modifies the layout of the product pages with the auction links being moved to the sidebar.

Related links [1] Spotlight of Amazon's use of links to their auction subsite; Useit.Com, March 30, 1999. [2] Going Vertical; Today's Links Story [3] [Macro error: There is no glossary entry named "Amazon Holiday Note; December 3, 1998 (Today's Links)"] ; Today's Links Story [4] Onsale unveils bid-bearing banner ads; News.Com