Amazon
Ease-of-Use
Unike ebay, Amazon don’t have a site map that contains hard to find pages like company profile and FAQ’s (Frequently Asked Questions). You may not even see what you need right away on HELP page. It actually took me awhile to find info about Amazon.
If you know how to dig links on Amazon, you’ll find out cool features like 1-Click ordering. Amazon goes out of its way to make it easy for you to spend your money. One of the site’s coolest features is 1-Click ordering, where you can order an item with the click of a single button.
Normally when you order an item, it’s placed in your Amazon Shopping cart. You then have to manually go through Amazon’s Checkout when you’re ready to finalize your order. With 1-Click ordering, however, all you have to do is click the 1-Click button shown in Figure 1-4, and the item you’re looking at will be automatically billed to your default credit card and shipped to your designated shipping address. It’s a great tool for the too-frequent purchaser.
Figure 1-4: Amazon’s 1-Click ordering button.
Listen to Music Online
Another neat feature is, you can use Amazon to sample music from all manner of artists on your own computer. Most CD product listings include track listings of that CD’s songs. Many of these tracks come with short (typically under a minute) audio samples of the songs; tracks with samples are underlined and have a music icon, as shown in Figure 1-5. Click a link to launch a music player and listen to the song. It’s a great way to hear music before you buy—and expand your musical universe!
Figure 17-9: Listen to sample CD tracks.
Read Books Online
Just as Amazon includes samples from audio CDs, it also includes samples from books—in some cases, complete chapters! That’s right, many book product listings include sample text that you can read on your computer screen. Just click the Look Inside This Book link under the cover picture and then browse through the available pages. You’d be surprised at the amount of content you can read for free—without making a single purchase!
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