Seems like every time I publish something, like a video training course, the internet gives it a new spin. In this case Amazon Author Central profile pages got a facelift which may be a botched job. It appears an effort was made to have more show at the top of the page at the sacrifice of information about each item. This is the new look and I’ll explain the differences:
The biography is a thin column beneath the main photo, which shows less text than the old version (I need to shorten the URLs to appear on one line). Also only two photos display, whereas the old version showed a choice of boxes beneath the main one allowing readers to click on eight options. Just one blog post is listed unless you click the “pan sideways” button, where before several blog headlines were shown prominently. It took me a few minutes to figure that out as I am used to scrolling down, not panning sideways. Fortunately you can still scroll down and find the old information, but it’s not as apparent at first glance since it’s further down from the landing zone. The video area shows higher on the page but only one, where before there was a choice of eight like the photos. “Author Updates” have replaced “Latest Tweet” and “Blog Posts” so that’s kind of a toss-up. The horizontal book presentation has a lack of reviews displayed. This is a bit concerning for books with many good reviews, in the event people don’t scroll down further to see the reviews. Although for books with great covers and few reviews, it might help a bunch.
The image below is from the UK Author Central, which never displayed blog posts and must be next in line for the facelift (France already got hers, Germany and Japan waiting).
Perhaps it’s just a matter of getting used to the changes, but at first glance I prefer the old version. If they could figure out a way to add the reviews to the horizontal book display, I’d like it better. Plus the photos and video options from before were a nice touch.
What are your thoughts? Please share in the comments. Have you seen your new look and made any changes?
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October 24, 2014 at 9:02 am
I don’t like this change: at first I was convinced all rss feeds from blogs-websites was eliminated. I finally figured out they were still there, but one had to scroll through 10-20 twitter tweets to get to them. I haven’t figured out how to get the blog posts to show up first, tweets 2nd, so I ended up deleting the twitter feed altogether. 2nd, for authors with a lot of books, only a few show up horizontally. It seems like more showed up when it went vertically. My experience is that potential buyers don’t want to have to read a lot of information before making a decision, so the more that shows up at first glance, the better.
October 24, 2014 at 9:07 am
Interesting idea to get the blog headlines displayed more by deleting the Twitter feed. I also prefer the old vertical display. People are used to scrolling down a screen, not going sideways.
November 15, 2014 at 6:05 pm
I like the old look. Why is it when Amazon decides to do something different on our pages, we don’t have a say in it?
November 15, 2014 at 10:17 pm
Donna, I think enough of us must have complained because, for the time being, Amazon has reverted to the old design.