Amazon.com is testing a redesign of its home page. The company said the site has grown to include over 40 "departments" since its launch in 1995 as a book-selling site, and it wants to make it easier for customers to find items in all departments.

Amazon.com is not the only one looking at improving its site - eBay recently redesigned its homepage and is rolling out so many changes it created a "sneak peak" to preview them to users (http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200708211028562.html).

The former head of eBay's developer program Jeffrey McManus, who also worked at Yahoo before starting his own company, wrote about Amazon's redesign on his blog and added his two-cents (he's "not wild" about the changes). He also wrote of the testing, "in the exciting world of springing jarring changes onto the users of unreasonably large web sites, this is known as "bucket-testing," explaining why only certain people see the new design (http://mcmanus.typepad.com/grind/2007/09/amazon-bucket-t.html).

Meanwhile, Amazon sellers seem to be absorbing the news on the Seller Soapbox discussion thread (http://www.amazonsellercommunity.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=141115).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/events/gno/002-3201968-3588852