If, like me, you’re not one for surprise gifts on your birthday or at Christmas, and would prefer to receive something you know you want, then you may want to consider using Amazon’s Wishlist. For a start, it doesn’t only work for Amazon, so don’t panic if you want to add items from John Lewis or wherever.
Follow our guide and you’ll soon be adding items and sharing like a pro. Albeit a pro with a weird fascination for EastEnders merchandise…
How to use Amazon Wishlists
The simplest way is from within Amazon itself. If you head to any product page you should see a ‘Add to List’ drop down on the right-hand side.
From this drop-down you can select an existing list or create a new one. Why have multiple lists? Well, for a start, you can have different privacy settings on a list, so you have a private one for yourself and a public one for sharing.
The best way to use it, though, is via a browser extension named Amazon Assistant. This has a number of features, not just saving products to your Wishlist, but also displaying watched deal notifications and showing product comparisons, amongst others. When you do want to add something to your Wishlist, you’ll find it works on other retailer websites as well. Just be aware that whereas product information, including price, is kept updated on your Wishlist for Amazon products, this is not the case for items from other retailers.
To view your lists head to amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/. From here, you can also delete and modify your lists as well as specific items – you can, for example, add a quantity, description and priority.
Viewing lists of friends and family
If friends or family have a Wishlist then you can add them to your Wishlist screen, for easier access later.
- Click on the ‘Your Friends’ tab
- Click in the field named ‘Find Someone’s List’
- Type in their email address or name and press Enter
- You’ll now be presented with any public Wishlists that match the details you searched for
- Click on ‘Remember’ to add them to the sidebar in the ‘Your Friends’ section
Buying from Amazon Wishlists
When viewing your own Wishlist, alongside each item will either be a button marked “Add to Basket”, if it’s an Amazon product, or “Shop this website”, for those items on other sites. Once bought, the item will automatically disappear from your list (or, if you specified a quantity, it will remain, albeit with a reduced quantity until all have been bought). Again, though, if you buy from another site this won’t happen automatically, so you’ll need to edit or delete the Wishlist item yourself.
When buying from somebody else’s list then it should disappear (or reduce in quantity) automatically once purchased (if it’s an Amazon item and you use the link on their list). However, if it doesn’t (it’s a thing) or their list directs you to a third-party site, then you’ll need to remove it manually. To do this, you should see a link similar to the following…
Clicking on ‘Buying this gift elsewhere?’ will prompt you for your name and an email address – an email will be sent to you containing a link that you must click to confirm that you purchased the item.
Note: Right now, this functionality is broken but it’s pretty important, so I’m sure it will return again in due course.
Sharing your Amazon Wishlists
To share a Wishlist with somebody you need to visit the list first and then grab the URL from the top of your browser. This will only work for Wishlists that have a privacy of ‘Public’ or ‘Shared’ (the latter can be shared but won’t appear in any search results).
Additionally, you can ensure that anybody who it’s being shared with is seeing it how you’d like it seen (e.g. in priority order). First of all, grab your Wishlist URL. Mine is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/B6E44IWZVEBU
There are three parameters that you can now add to the end of the URL:
reveal=
This can be ‘all’, ‘purchased’ or ‘unpurchased’.
sort=
This can be ‘priority’ (the priority you’ve set, high to low), ‘last-updated’ (the date you last updated the item), ‘date-added’ (the date you added it to the list), ‘universal-price-desc’ (the price, high to low), ‘universal-price’ (the price, low to high) or ‘universal-title’ (the title of the item, alphabetically).
layout=
This can be ‘standard’ or ‘compact’.
Make sure each parameter is separated with an ampersand, except for the first which is a question mark. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/B6E44IWZVEBU?sort=priority – this will show my wish list in priority order
http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/B6E44IWZVEBU?sort=priority&layout=compact – as before, but will show the more compact layout
Personally, I make sure I give each item on my list a priority and then use that first link to share with friends and family.
Main pic credit: Dhinal Chheda
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