How Amazon Changed Over The Years — From Humble Beginnings To eCommerce Behemoth

When Amazon first launched, it didn’t look like much — at least, nobody expected it to become the world’s leading eCommerce. Here’s how Amazon changed over the years.

How Amazon changed over the years

The history of Amazon is fascinating to anyone who wants to imitate its success. After all, we all start small, and in the beginning, Amazon was nothing but an online bookstore (its logo used to say that it was Earth’s biggest bookstore). Its design, too, was heavy on text and very basic, although already recognizable with an emphasis on blue color.

It’s interesting noticing all the things that changed, web design-wise. As Amazon stopped limiting itself to books, its design changed as well. More images appeared, and visually it became much more appealing.

More changes came in 2011. Amazon gained new design elements and sections. The user experience was simplified, and the website became more mobile-friendly. The search bar increased in size while featured products took center stage on the homepage. In 2012, the logo was also redesigned by Turner Duckworth.

In recent years, Amazon emphasized personal recommendations using new predictive algorithms. Once again, the home page was modified to show more of their brands, like Fire TV devices.

Amazon’s web design

Modern Amazon is clean, modern, and user-friendly. The company aims to make its platform easy to use — a piece of good advice for any eCommerce designer. Its design is minimalistic to an extent, with few decorative elements. The search bar is prominent, inviting the users to dive in. This is one of the lessons we can learn from Amazon: it prioritizes user experience. Amazon created its design with users in mind. The website personalizes search results and the main page to help customers find what they didn’t even know they needed. Amazon also uses cloud computing services to power the website, ensuring scalability and reliability – no eCommerce owner wants outages.