Amazon.com is previewing a new home page redesign with some of their users (in the exciting world of springing jarring changes onto the users of unreasonably large web sites, this is known as ‘bucket-testing’). You might not see the changes when you go to Amazon unless they put your account in the test bucket.
I’m not wild about the changes. I like the navigational tabs on top, where they used to be, instead of off to the side. To accommodate this, they made the new design much too wide (about 250 pixels wider than their previous design, I’d estimate — I had to resize my browser so I could see the whole page). The “TV Month” promo also takes up way too much space and the “What Do Customers Buy” widget is out of place on the home page (it should really only appear on a product page, since “What Do Customers Buy” is intended to provide an alternative to a specific product you’re looking at).
It’s called A/B testing, not bucket testing.
And you are?
I’m using the terminology used by at least two of the biggest web sites in the world. You, of course, are free to call it whatever you like.
Wah, you had to resize your browser? I think it makes sense to use the real estate. Wide screens are rapidly becoming the more prominent screen out there and screen sizes are getting larger and larger. Makes sense to place the nav on the left instead of taking up the more limited vertical space with rows of tabs. Visually unless I am looking to navigate I don’t consider area while I am viewing the product “viewport”. We are going to see this nav layout become more popular. I like the larger cart iconage as well as the good sized search pieces. I think they have work to do in the non nav area with layout as you mentioned.