I love the new masthead/search area, but I still think the main content area needs a little work -- everything has a "floating in space" look to it because the layout doesn't contain enough visual anchors to prevent it from looking unstructured.

All in all, I like where this is going.

I feel like there's lots of blank space in the main area and everything seems to be cramped into the nav.

I feel like somebody like my parents wouldn't know where to click (or even start to look) if they were looking to buy a book.

Search.

I hardly ever browse by category, they're too generic. Whenever I'm looking for something on Amazon, I go right for the search bar.

This new design makes an emphasis on search so I'm guessing Amazon noticed that other people use the same the same way I do.

One man's anchor is another's ball and chain. Lots of "binding' elements tend to imprison information by cluttering the screen.

Edward Tufte seems like an influence on the redesign. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Edward_Tufte

Is this strategy really working that well for them? I have all four of these back-to-back:

"More Items to Consider" "Related to Items You've Viewed" "Inspired by Your Browsing History" "Additional Items to Explore"

Then at the end, "Continue Shopping: Customers Who Bought Items in Your Recent History Also Bought" They must move a lot of product this way. I don't know that it makes for a very effective homepage, because of the overwhelming clutter, but I must be wrong because they've been sticking with this for years.

While they're at it, they should really remove the Kindle ad from the homepage already. They know I own one, why keep trying to sell me it?

They may be trying to burn down inventory before releasing the "iPad" Kindle before the holidays.

What, you're not looking for Christmas gifts for your friends and family already??

Does the site recognize you? ("Hello, nphase" at the top)

Yes. I also have the prime logo instead of the normal ones, and the 2 items in cart that were added a few days ago but not purchased yet.

I like this.

Clear user flow. Less distracting colours - Dark colour against mainly light BG should = call to action. Iconography, search icon instead of go. Removing the cart from the blue bar gives it separate visual identity than search.. Less help text/descriptive text.. more white space.

A breath of fresh air from Amazon, lets hope they take this redesign throughout quickly. I like designs that carry me through the site on a soft fluffly cloud.

very similar to the google redesign

  * {
    padding: 25px;
    border-random: 1px solid #ccc;
  }

done

border-random, nice touch ;)

I had the new design for about a week, before it even showed up on HN, but it seems to have gone away for me.

Same here. I've been seeing the redesign for at least a week already. I wonder how I keep getting in test groups. It seems like every time a major site like Google or Amazon does a redesign I end up seeing the it way before everyone else. I wonder how these sites chose who to show the redesign to first as test cases?

It's done randomly. They do a controlled test of a feature by turning the feature "on" for a window of time, and measure users' reactions in the control vs. experimental groups in real time. Experimental bias is minimized by the traffic being simultaneous, having a large sample size (visitors), and randomly deciding who gets put in which group.

Huge focus on digital stuff. You have to use a drop-down menu to get to physical goods...

And this used to be a bookstore.

That's the operative phrase: "used to be".

Amazon is now general merchandising, though focused on information (printed/electronic) products.

Wal-Mart's biggest current competitor is Amazon. There's a large initiative at Wal-Mart to develop an R&D lab near San Francisco: http://www.baycitizen.org/technology/story/inside-walmart-la...

Good luck matching Amazon's culture with that mandatory drug test requirement.

No, you have to use a drop-down menu to find physical books, a logical decision considering (as I recall) eBook sales have eclipsed paper book sales on Amazon.

I will be glad when this finally rolls out. I am a marketplace seller and whenever amazon makes any changes, there are tons of other bugs that come along with it and my sales drop dramatically until they are fixed.

The last major set of changes happened in July.

But, I would rather have it now then mid-December,.

How are you going to benefit from these new changes as a seller?

He won't benefit, if history serves. He's traditionally been harmed by buggy X.0 redesigns, so he wants it deployed ASAP so the big bugs are fixed by the Christmas rush.

It will probably have negative effects on my sales. The new changes will showcase digital purchases/downloads and I'm selling physical goods.

It does seem to highlight digital stuff on the homepage. But if I look at any particular product page, then I see new related category links on the top. Those might help your business.

login out and back in. the new design's already deployed.

I've been logging in and out for the past 3 days and I don't see any new design change.

Update: I can only see the new changes from Firefox.

I'm logging in from AU and not seeing it in any of my browsers.

Does anyone else feel weird about the ad in the top-right?

They've got some copy written up about the change here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000347381

TL;DR: More Amazon revenue = lower Amazon prices.

I'm not quite buying it. You don't go to Walmart and see ads for McDonalds — you see a whole McDonalds. Amazon, like Walmart, is the sort of company that tries to sell everything. Wouldn't Amazon rather find a way to sell whatever is being advertised? Perhaps this is just a way for them to scrape a bit off the top of sales they don't (or can't) offer in-house.