Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Amazon’s redesign of its Web site is clearly intended to support its forthcoming color Kindle, but the changes mark a more significant shift in E-Commerce. They could mean the beginning of the end for the idea that E-tail sites should depend on PC standbys like keyboards and mice—as well as the notion that an E-tail site can afford to be a lot more cluttered than a brick-and-mortar store.

It’s not just that the new homepage is cleaner and more open to make it easier to browse (and buy) from a tablet. The same changes—bigger buttons, less clutter and small print—will make the site much friendlier to other customers, too. That could force other E-tailers to throw out the rulebooks for their own aging Web site designs—most of which probably seemed like a good idea in 1995, but haven’t been completely revamped since E-Commerce became serious business a decade ago.

The new Amazon site is reportedly being tested with a small number of customers, but snapshots of the homepage have shown up in The Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch. The two versions aren’t identical, but both eliminate the left-side rail of departments that is a mainstay of many E-Commerce sites, as well as other spots on the page where clusters of links are hard enough for a customer to navigate with a mouse—never mind with a human finger.

Amazon says the new design will be how both PC and tablet users see the site, with a simplified version for smartphone users. There’s currently no announced date for a public unveiling, and it may yet be tweaked.

But the design principle that appears to drive the new Amazon site is that nothing is uncomfortable to use on a Kindle or other tablet. Mice and external keyboards have been specifically designed out of this site.

One consequence is that the site can’t afford to be cramped. Never mind the big blank white spaces on the sample homepages—what’s more important is that even text links are fat-finger friendly. There’s generous space around them, which makes them both easy to poke and easier to read in the first place. It’s the equivalent of widening the aisles in a store—it’s simply easier to navigate.

The row of products along the bottom of the screen? Each item is nice and square—it’s hard for a customer to miss the item he’s trying to select. The stack of items on the right side (only visible in one of the two screenshots)? Even the smallest of them are easy to hit. (And yes, there is still a list of departments—but it’s a drop-down list, safely out of the way until it’s needed.)

Compare that with the traditional left-rail department list.