Amazon Patents ‘gravity’ Links

It should be no secret that Amazon would love all Amazon.com visitors to click on the “Buy” link more often. Amazon.com has gone through multiple redesigns to achieve better conversion rates for the company. The recent “gravity-based link system” patent, which was granted to Amazon recently, could potentially help the company get more people to buy things.

A user interface of an electronic content rendering device implements gravity-based link assist to enhance user experience when browsing linked content. As a user moves a pointer along a trajectory across various links and objects, gravitational fields surrounding the links and objects provide a pulling effect that draws the pointer toward these fields. Responsive to pointer deceleration being detected when the pointer resides within a gravitational field, the link assist repositions the pointer to a center of the link or object relative to the trajectory of the pointer within the field.

This patent describes a system that pulls a user’s cursor toward a link or clickable object when it is over a “gravitational field. This will make webpages easier to navigate. More importantly, it will allow Amazon to help its visitors buy things more conveniently. It will be interesting to see when Amazon goes about implementing this system.