E-Christmas at Yahoo and Amazon December 7, 1999 Yahoo's front page continues to get lost in a maze of links to the plethora of Yahoo subsites and services now online. Last week, Yahoo continued that tradition when they dropped a box of e-commerce links to their Yahoo Shopping e-commerce site right above the space Yahoo's original directory was placed. But at the same time it makes sense for Yahoo to devote more than a few links to a section of their site they are spending a large portion of their $64.5 million marketing budget on promoting.

I wonder if this is what Jakob Nielsen was referring to in his November 1998 Alertbox review of Yahoo: "As more services get added to Yahoo's home page, the page risks being confusing and overwhelming. It's not bad yet, but beware." Mark Hurst on Yahoo's tactical change Mark Hurst of Creative Good comments on Yahoo's tactical change at his site goodexperience.com where he covers the online customer experience: "For me, the most interesting issue is on the strategic level. A quick, easy customer experience garnered Yahoo the success it enjoys today -- and the new prominence of Yahoo Shopping complexifies the experience and could threaten Yahoo's core experience." Amazon's Holiday Note And it's only a few more weeks until Christmas Eve, so Amazon is once again this year posting constantly updated shipping dates for US addresses so everyone can receive their books and power saws on time this year. So instead of scanning shipping charts, customers can let Amazon's servers do the calculations and present the results for every product on the site.

Related links [1] Web Aesthetics; Veen.com Jeffrey Veen's Presentation Outline, includes section on the 3-panel layout and LSD (logo, search and directory) design [2] Why Yahoo is Good (But May Get Worse); Useit.com Jakob Nielsen's November 1998 Review of Yahoo in his Alertbox column: things Yahoo does right, problems ahead for Yahoo, what you can learn from Yahoo and Advertising Doesn't Work on the Web [3] Can Yahoo! turn searchers into buyers?; ZDNN Wall Street Journal article from October 29, 1998 that looks at Yahoo's launch of a new television advertising campaign during the World Series to showcase Yahoo as a shopping destination [4] Holiday Ordering Deadlines; Amazon.com Shipping chart and other holiday shipping specifications for Amazon.com [5] Amazon's Holiday Note ; Tomalak's Realm