I just noticed that Amazon has made a big move I’ve been anticipating for years – they’re pointing Canadians on amazon.com to amazon.ca. Here are details…
4 CommentsCategory: E-commerce
Recently I received a thought-provoking e-mail from Jeff Ginsberg at “The E-mail Company”:http://www.theemailcompany.com asking why we didn’t talk more about analytics here at One Degree.
bq.. Long time reader, big time fan.
How come there is not much at One Degree about analytics? Am I not looking in the right place or has it been overlooked?
After getting my free “Google Analytics”:http://www.google.com/analytics/ trial and setting it up in a matter of minutes I have to tell you the reports rival the big boys.
It would be nice to hear from readers who have used “Omniture”:http://www.omniture.com/, “Coremetrics”:http://www.coremetrics.com/, or “Web Side Story”:http://www.websidestory.com to see what they think of Google Analytics.
I’d also like to hear from people using the top tier products on e-commerce sites. Have they gone to the effort to do advanced tagging for the complex sales calculations the above mentioned products can give?
By the way, “Hotwire”:http://www.hotwire.com and some of the other travel sites use their analytics to send triggered email message to customers based on what they searched for on their site.
For example if you sign up for Hotwire’s deals and search for Los Angeles you will start to get e-mail about deals to LA like this:
Dear Jeff,
Looking for great deals in Los Angeles, California? Hotwire finds great deals on unsold hotel rooms. You save big.
Travelers like you found these great deals on Hotwire:
…
Very cool.
Regards,
Jeff Ginsberg, Chief Email Officer
p. Cool indeed.
Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal, and in that spirit two large Canadian sites have unveiled significant redesigns. “CBC.ca”:http://www.cbc.ca/ and “Sears.ca”:http://www.sears.ca/ have taken the wraps off major site overhauls.
h2. CBC.ca
CBC’s former site had been getting a little long in the tooth. It was a very utilitarian design with pages that essentially contained a laundry list of links to articles. That and the odd picture thrown in for some visual context. But mainly it was a fairly dry information delivery system.
The new site is a major improvement. Its grid system is far better laid out to allow readers to scan the page. The visual design has been updated to better reflect modern Web design. The navigation has been simplified into two choices Radio or TV, (actually three if you count CBC.ca as a nav item). This is an improvement from the previous navigation which was much more confusing.
One criticism, I’ve heard of the site, is that it borrows from “CNN.com.”:http://www.cnn.com/ I don’t see this being a big issue. CNN and CBC are large news gathering organizations and would end up with similar design problems. Coming to a similar design solution would seem natural.
Left hand navigation is better laid out, providing access to features like Podcasts and RSS feeds which were previously difficult to find or not available.
The CBC group does really great work in a challenging environment. The CBC is a tough place to gain consensus due to the number of people who have input. The mere fact this redesign looks as good as it does is a testament to the talented people there.
h2. Sears.ca
I need to disclose up front that I was not familiar with the previous Sears.ca site so I can only look at this one as a fresh site.
Sears.ca is trying to bring its site up to modern e-commerce standards. In fact “they partnered with Amazon”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/04/28/filtered-links-for-april-28-2005 to get this site online. The visual appeal has that candy style that is oh so 2.0. The main nav has a glow effect running horizontally through it. The navigational text is white on a white glow. This lowers the contrast making it potentially tough to read.