How to Find Your Amazon Wish List Link
Since I’m all in information architecture books this week, I started exploring given examples, especially the Amazon.com. I haven’t been in touch with it before, simply because I live in a country far away from America and only recently they started to deliver books and stuff all the way to here. This article is about finding your ways through the part of Amazon.com jungle.
Yesterday evening I gave it a run. After initial browsing around and learning the interface, I started interacting (sounds so cool). Searching and scanning went quite smoothly – facets (category blocks of links like on Yahoo!) are really speeding things up. I like the possibility to add items even though I’m not logged-in. No unnecessary registration, I can do that later, when I’m ready… After a while I decided to create a wish list. That was easy – there was nice unobtrusive link “Click here to sign in” right near the wish list logo. Cool. Few registration steps and I had my wish list created. I thought to myself “Oh, great, there’s a link near the cart, so no problem finding it latter. Let’s search for some items I can add.” Adding to a wish list was quite easy and I love the suggesting feature under “Your Store” with those “I own it” and “Not interested” buttons for each item – this I found very useful. I added some items and logged out for my dinner with the family.
When Luka fell a sleep, I called my wife to show her where she can see what books I’d like to have in case she gets extremely generous. I didn’t want to log in, I wanted to show her the process in case she would browse from her office without my login details. “It’s easy, just type in my e-mail address and the system will show you my wish list”. Since she visits my blog (she’s my wife after all), she asked me if I could place a direct link at the blog home page, so she don’t have to type in my e-mail. Naturally, I simply copied the URL from the browser’s address bar and pasted it in my ‘Dear Santa’ link list…
This morning I followed the link to the wish list from my blog to continue exploration of Amazon.com. And where did it get me? To a Cindy’s wish list! Whata…? OK, calm down, it could be that I made a mistake by copy-pasting link directly from the address bar – they probably add some session IDs and track users. That’s okay, I understand. I’ll just log in and find the link at my profile page…
Where the heck is login link? Geez! Am I going nuts? I know I registered yesterday, so I’m going to try the “sign in” link – maybe the system remembered I’ve already registered with this e-mail. Oh, there it is! The login form. It’s after the “Sign In” link!
But why? Couldn’t they add it separately and make it clear the difference between signing in (once, the first time) and logging in (more than once, every other time)? Never mind, lesson learned. I just need that wish list link and now that I’m in, how hard can it be?
Searching my wish list page for a wish list link… But where it is? Maybe I’m scanning too fast or maybe my English is too poor or I’m overlooking the keyword or… ‘Share your wish list’? Is that it? Hm… I don’t want to share it, I just want the damn link, but I guess this could be it. Clicking… Another web form to fill, no links, no trace of any relevant information. OK, now I’m really pissed! If this is not what I do for a living I’d probably close this page!
Even though I’m not sure that I’m going somewhere, I’m typing in my e-mail. But wait! Something might go wrong (again). Maybe I should provide a different e-mail, since the system could tell me I can᾿t send to my registration e-mail? This seems logical. Oh, well… Backspacing and typing another domain… Sending an e-mail to myself… Opening my e-mail client… Received an e-mail from Amazon… Let’s see… Voila! I received a link to my wish list! Yay! What a procedure to get this!…
Wifey, if you are reading this, could you please, please buy me something? At least for the efforts?