The prevailing trends in web design say go minimal or go home, so why then is Amazon’s front page cluster bomb of choices? It sells more, writes Alex Moskalyuk.

Simple design in Amazon’s case generated higher cart abandonment and statistically significant decreases in customer conversions.

That’s based on slide 18-19 of “Front Line Internet Analytics at Amazon.com,” [PDF] a talk Ronny Kohavi and Matt Round gave at at EMetrics in 2004.

It’s an interesting read as you watch Amazon tweak and optimize… remember the tab mountain? — BEN POPKEN

Amazon: screw the simplicity, stick to what sells [Alex Moskalyuk]

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