Amazon is beginning to roll out a major website revamp designed to make navigation easier on tablet computers, including a coming touch-screen tablet of its own, reports the Wall Street Journal. Gone is the familiar blue-and-orange navigation bar along the left, replaced instead with plenty of open, white space and an emphasis on digital products—that is, an interface optimized for the tablet computer.
"As shoppers migrate to smaller, more interactive screens such as tablets, making the content dynamic and personalized to each individual consumer becomes overwhelmingly important," said a former Amazon manager. "And that's just what this redesign does—it puts those features front and center." But retail experts say the redesign of such a well-known site is always a risk, especially for a company with $34 billion in revenues as holiday season nears. The 7-inch Amazon tablet will reportedly look similar to the panned Blackberry PlayBook, and could be on the market as early as October, according to Techcrunch. (More Amazon stories.)