Amazon A+ 2.0 Pages Appear in UK, Germany

New Amazon A+ 2.0 system picking up momentum in Europe, no sign of a full launch yet.

Following on from our preview of the new Amazon A+ 2.0 system that went live in Italy back in September, we’ve started to notice the tell-tale signs of the modular content system at work behind the scenes on some key product launches for Pentax in the UK, and Philips in Germany.

At the time of writing, the new system is still tantalisingly unavailable in both locales, but our sources suggest that Amazon is offering key partners the chance to have their A+ pages created in the new style; both as a beta test of the new systems functionality, and to see how the customisation options fit with the needs of some of their biggest vendors.

So, what do these new pages tell us about what to expect from Amazon A+ 2.0?

1. Fixed Width is the Future – Amazon’s hatred of white space is well and truly over! If a cursory glance at the latest UK and US home pages hasn’t convinced you, these new pages seem to suggest that Amazon A+ 2.0 is to be fixed firmly at 980px. This is obviously a major design consideration, and possibly good news for those who were frustrated by the inconsistent look of previous A+ layouts.
2. Mobile is Still a Mystery – The A+ content is conspicuous by its absence when viewing either of these pages on a mobile browser or via Amazon App. Whether this is something that has yet to be implemented for Amazon A+ 2.0 is still unknown.
3. Page Weight Increase is Negligible –  It’s difficult to compare apples-to-apples in this situation, but as far as we can tell the new A+ designs don’t seem to add a significant amount to the page weight — especially when you line them up alongside similar, bespoke A+ descriptions.
4. Some Formatting Quirks – Looking at the Philips comparison table, you can see the alignment of the text and symbols in the body of the table is a little bit off. There have also been some examples of empty elements still being allotted space in the design (e.g. a three-pack, with content and images only provided for two), which can lead to an awkward layout and large gaps appearing in the middle of the description. Obviously some of these are probably unavoidable due to nature of the system, but it’s hard not to hope that workarounds are found before the final Amazon A+ 2.0 launch.