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Posted by Joel Shepherd on 03/27/07 03:36
In article <46086a76$0$15957$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net>,
Ingo Schmidt <ich@der-ingo.de> wrote:
>
> Well, but to actually GET there, is not that obvious. But instead of
> changing browsers, I would ask amazon to redesign their page so that
> there is actually a login box right on the very first page.
Why?
A basic principle of web UIs is not to ask the user for anything
personally identifying until either it's needed, or until the site can
give the user something worthwhile in return.
If you're visiting Amazon from a personal computer, and you allow
cookies, Amazon already has a pretty good idea of who you are (and say
as much on practically every page), and is already offering you tidbits
like personalization, etc., based on that ... and without requiring you
to log in. What do you want to do more work for?
> I have always found this confusing in amazon, that you can follow some
> "my XYZ" links without having signed in yet.
Like what? Recommendations or "[your name]'s Store"? Things that have no
personally identifying information on them? Or a "My Account" link,
which takes you to a list of links of things you can do with your
account ... without showing any account details? Do you really want to
have to log in to simply be shown what you can do with your account once
you log in?
> E.g. click on "Your account". These words suggest that you end up in
> some personal area to which you need to sign in.
> But no, you get a huge list of options and only after choosing one of
> them, THEN you need to log in.
Right, because THEN you're going to be shown personally identifying
information that you may not want others to see. But there's no special
privilege in seeing a list of generic links, so why make you go to
special effort to see it? Why make you log in before you can use any
part of the site, when the overwhelming percentage of pages on the site
have practically nothing to do with you personally?
Perhaps you like feeling very secure, and somehow logging in gives you
that feeling. Nothing wrong with that (and if you want to, you _can_ log
in to Amazon from the first page, and if the first page you're seeing
looks like what I'm seeing, it's not hard to figure out what to do).
But many folks don't want to have to announce who they are, simply to
read reviews about some tool they're thinking of buying, or to see
what's on the New York Times best-seller list, or to see what's new in
classical music.
I can guarantee you that if Amazon required customers to log in to see
anything on the site ... it probably wouldn't be in business today.
--
Joel.
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