Max Riffner: Amazon Drops Tabs

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Amazon Drops Tabs

Amazon.com has dropped its tabbed navigation. Greg Storey has a great write-up about how big this is. Since it only seems to appear for Safari web browsers so far, it will take some time before e-commerce managers see it and shit their pants as they rush off to their design departments and request, no, demand a mockup of what their store would look like if it was without tabs. I’m so not joking. The e-commerce industry watches Amazon like dogs lick their own ass: slavishly. And, hey, with good reason. Amazon makes buckets of money. Their experience with customer usability is astoundingly large – they didn’t just “decide” to do this. There had to have been an enormous amount of data backing this decision up. This is why we’ll start seeing more stores emulate the design. Most people figure that they’ll let Amazon do all the heavy lifting. Which is bad and speaks of how little people consider their customers (but that is a conversation for another day).

Having been an e-commerce designer, being forced to use tabs as navigation because “everyone else does it” was frustrating. As stores add more sections/categories to their product line, there is only so much room for tabs, which inevitably starts the uncomfortable conversation about having two rows of tabs. Nevermind that it makes no sense whatsoever and forget trying to come up with an alternate navigation solution that would actually be easier for customers to use. Just tack another row of tabs on there and call it good.

I don’t hate tabs. I think they have their place as a visual metaphor. What I hate out of all of this is the lack of innovation and respect for users/customers. Congratulations to Amazon for making a bold step, and hey, if your store uses tabs – check your data – it may be fine the way it is. Let your customers decide. Just don’t have multiple rows of tabs, that is just painful for everyone from customers to your own designer(s).