Week Thirteen- Hierarchy

Amazon.com is good example of a webpage with understandable hierarchy of information and visuals. The home page clearly displays the shopping departments on the left side, and when you scroll over each main headline a sidebar with more detailed options appears.

After you select your shopping department, in the screen shot I chose books, you move on to the main page of that department. On the left side of the main books page there is a side bar to browse different categories of books such as children's books, cook books, history books, and you can also search by what books are on sale or that are available on Kindle. At the top of the page there is a search tool bar where you can search all books or in a specific book category such as used books and textbooks. As you scroll down the page you can find containers on Books of the Month, Bestsellers, Books on a Budget, Best Books of 2009, etc.

At the bottom of the page you can find the links for Amazon Careers, Press Releases, and Help.

Overall I think the Amazon website is set up in an orderly and appropriate manner that allows for easy searching and browsing, especially considering the volume of products the website sells. Much of websites ease in searching can be contributed to its excellent hierarchy of information and search options.