Two simple steps to improve the usability of Amazon’s Wish Lists

Published on 16^th June 2008 in Usability, Websites.

I’m a fairly frequent user of Amazon‘s Wish List feature, but its usability is far from ideal. It may be okay if you don’t access it too often, but I use it to store a list of books and other items that I intend to buy sometime, but not right now. Here are two really simple ways in which they could improve the usability of Wish Lists:

Don’t make me hover over a link or click twice to access my Wish List. The site’s redesign makes you do this, even though there’s plenty of space in the interface for a simple link.

Before the redesign:

After the redesign:

Allow me to save the default sort order of the Wish List. I assign a priority to each item, but whenever I load the page, it sorts items by date.

Ideally, I should be able to click on “Wish Lists” and then see my list sorted by priority. Instead, I have to click the “Gifts & Wish Lists” drop down menu, then on “Wish Lists”, then “Sort by”, then “Priority (high to low)”, then “GO!”. Amazon make you click five times more than is necessary, but they could improve the usability of Wish Lists by altering two simple parts of their design.