E-Commerce

E-Commerce Web-Sites Report

Case Study 1:Amazon.co.uk

Arguably the best e-commerce site on the web, amazon.co.uk is a very famous site. It has lead the way for many sites, and online businesses. The criteria are as follows:

 Speed of Page Downloads

 Navigation

 Ease of Use

 Range of Products

 Secure Server

Speed of Page Download

Impressively, amazon.co.uk manages to download entirely in the first three seconds. However, it’s American counterpart takes twice as long. Both of these times are acceptable however, as a recent survey has claimed that the average internet user will wait for a maximum of 10 seconds and then will press the back button. This time actually reduces as you visit the site more and more as the images are stored on your computer, and so can be re-used. This speed is consistent on every page, even unvisited pages.

Navigation

Amazon has been held up as an example recently, as it’s "three clicks to get anywhere" system grew steadily more popular. It’s not entirely true, but navigation is still exceptionally easy. A small table down the side reveals all the places, and sub-categories available within that category, while a toolbar at the top makes it easy to flip quickly from books to music, plus underneath is the main sub-categories available.

Ease of Use

Once you have found what you want, and been persuaded by the reviews to buy it, you must click the elusive "Add to Shopping Basket" button, which actually took me some time to find (but maybe that’s just me). Click it, and you are taken to a screen where you may save several things up, and buy them at once later, or delete something things from your shopping list, and then see the total. From there it’s just a quick click to the "checkout" where you must sign up as a member, or enter your password if you’ve already shopped there before.

Range of Products

To say that amazon.co.uk has a broad range of products would be the understatement of the year. It sells all that is necessary for life (literally), except for a) food, and b) clothes. In non exaggerated terms, that translates