Amazon.com was not only a pioneer in E-commerce websites, but it was also one of the first to use horizontal navigation, using tabs to organize their content. This method of presenting site sections and possible destinations is an example of a “real world” metaphor that worked on the web.
Horizontal x Vertical Menus
The centered horizontal and the left vertical menus are the two most popular navigational conventions on website user interfaces. Horizontal navigation has three main advantages:
- All menu links are visible.
- Contextual navigation can be easily organized on the left or below the global navigation.
- It doesn’t waste pixels of the screen, leaving space to content.
But, horizontal navigation has limits because of the screen size. Users are not used to horizontal scrolling. The user’s comfort with vertical scrolling is an advantage to the left menu navigation, where links can be unlimited. Moreover, links can be added and removed more easily.
Amazon.com’s Choice
Amazon.com is responsible for the horizontal navigation’s popularity, but suffered from its limitations. The site started using tabs back in 1998, when it was basically a bookstore. But, in a short period of time, Amazon.com started to sell a variety of products, demanding more and more tabs. In 2000, because of the lack of space, they added an extra line of tabs showing other groups of products like health & beauty, software, electronics, and DVD & video.
Providing many options is the best way of appealing to a variety of people, but Amazon.com suffered because of its two line horizontal navigation. With 40 categories of products, how could they organize the sections in their traditional tab menu? They couldn’t. So, their solution was to eliminate almost all the tabs.
Today, Amazon.com has only one tab represents all the 40 categories. A mouse over Ajax solution allows the user to see the complete list of options. The other tabs include the site logo and a tab for personalization, totaling 3 basic tabs.
Amazon.com designed a creative solution to solve its content display and organization problem, while keeping their traditional horizontal tab navigation. We will see how long they keep this simple solution. Now that they have space, adding extra tabs can be a temptation that can turn an elegant solution into a weak one.
