Each time I visit amazon.com, and I visit too often, if I’m not already logged in, I stumble looking for the Sign In link. I would expect the “Sign In” text at the top of the page to be a link taking me to a Sign In form.  Or even better to automatically display a Sign In form on the homepage.  But instead you are required to click on something that would only be available to you once you ARE signed in – e.g. “personalized recommendations”, “Your Lists”, “Your Account”, etc.

This seems like such a fundamental flaw that it had to be done on purpose.  But why?  Why break with convention and force people to take an extra cognitive step? Did they conduct usability studies and find that this was superior somehow?  I’m very curious…

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