Since it’s launch in late 2007, I’ve been buying all of my MP3′s from Amazon. It was a pretty easy decision for me to make, no DRM, acutal MP3s, a higher bitrate (256), and it’s cross platform. But there is still room for improvement.

I’m going to focus on the album/singles pages. My first thought when glancing at a sample page is information overload. I took a screenshot of coldplay’s Prospekt’s March EP page and proceeded to examine in detail what I think should be taken out.

In the screenshot, I mention that I would hide some information. The information should still be kept, just have it hidden till the user wants to see it. And then it can slide into view with some jQuery magic. It should be loaded when the page is first loaded; no ajax. That would just be a wasted call to the server.

Next I’d like to focus on where customers spend most of their time. At the MP3 box type thingy where you can preview and purchase individual songs.

1. There is no way to select a couple of songs and buy them all at once without going to a different page and back again.
   1. I noticed today that when you click on Buy MP3 it no longer takes you to another page but replaces the Buy MP3 button with “Purchased”. One down three more to go.
2. Amazon should also copy Itunes and show a small bar graph showing a songs popularity.
3. Why can’t we preview the entire track? If it’s because of Piracy, there are much easier ways to steal music, than ripping the audio from a streaming site.
4. I would like to see a fast forward type bar when listening to the previews.

Something else I’d like Amazon to add is a better recommendation engine. Better than “Customers who bought this, also bought this”. And no, Apple genius isn’t any better.

I hope you enjoyed my review.