With all the excitement about the upcoming SDK for the iPhone and iPod Touch it is easy to forget the many excellent web apps and iPhone optimized sites that already exist. Last night I discovered one of the best.
While I am a big fan of Amazon.com and make many of my purchases from their site, I hadn’t checked out their iPhone-optimized site until the other day. I wasn’t expecting much from it but when I navigated to it boy was I surprised. The interface, which was, I am told, recently refreshed, works incredibly well. It is quick, easy to use and puts an abundance of information at your fingertips– literally. It is clear that a great deal of thought went into it. Moreover, it is clear that the site is intended for real shopping, rather than creating a presence for Amazon that might encourage future purchases.
To get a real-world sense of using the iPhone to browse and shop on the site I first looked up the Amazon Kindle (I’m still deciding if I want to get it in place of my Sony Reader) on my iMac. I read the product description, glanced at some of the customer reviews and watched a couple of the demonstration videos on the site. I then went through the process of placing an order, stopping just short of hitting the "purchase" button.
With that experience fresh in my mind, I picked up my iPhone, browsed to Amazon’s site, and typed "Kindle" into the search field. I hit "go" and was near instantaneously presented with the top ten search results. For each item the name, price, current availability, a small picture and the familiar customer rating of 1 to 5 was presented.
Scrolling to the bottom of the page I found an option to show additional responses. I tapped on the tenth item, the Sony Reader, and within seconds was brought to its specific page. The item, a picture, the number of reviews and star rating, the list price and the actual selling price. In addition, there was a button to "buy it now" or to "add to shopping cart", as well as the UPC code and sales rank.
In other words, the same information available when browing on a full PC or laptop was available on the iPhone.
But that wasn’t the most impressive thing. When I scrolled down a tiny bit I was presented with the first line or two of the first five customer reviews and that individual’s rating. To the left of the rating was a small downward arrow which, when tapped, immediately expanded that review. And when I say immediate I mean immediate!!! The print, while small, was easy to read. A second tap and I was once again greeted by the review previews. I read twenty different reviews in this way and while the print was small it was totally legible. I WAS IMP
RESSED! Once again, I placed an order for the Kindle (safe to do since it is out of stock for the foreseeable future) and then promptly canceled it. All from my iPhone. Obviously I was not able to view the video demonstration that had been on the full site, but that was the only downside I noticed (and they can be seen on YouTube!)
While the layout/usability of Amazon’s site is quite nice what really stood out was the speed with which the interface worked. On my home WiFi network it was near instantaneous. But of course the real test came when trying to navigate the site using an Edge data connection.
That was the real shocker. I don’t know how they did it, but I am spending New Years in an area with only one bar of signal yet, after a slight but tolerable period of latency when first pulling up the site, navigation was a breeze. And once the initial site loaded it wasn’t just tolerable, it was downright fast. And because both the Product Description and the Customer Reviews are part of the initial page load, the actual product research is snappy as can be.
According to Amazon’s marketing department both the expandable detail page and the order confirmation with fully editable user information were recently revamped. In my experience they did an excellent job.
Amazon’s new site turns the iPhone into a great option for researching and purchasing any and everything they offer. If you didn’t get the gifts you wanted this holiday season just pull out your iPhone and go shopping!
Pros
-Easy to use
-Clean, quick interface
-A true mobile shopping solution
Cons
-No video reviews or descriptions
-You still have to pay your credit card bill at the end of the month
Continue reading:
- Everything New Apple Just Announced (Septembe
- Apple Watch Pre-Order
- Apple Research Kit launches with 5 Apps
- Apple TV now only $69
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