SMP - AMAZON
Agency: smp, client: amazon / Role: ux designer
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SMP is a London based agency that has been appointed a Global Solution Provider by Amazon. SMP provides not only AWS consulting to external clients but is also integrated within the Amazon ecosystem to provide research and support to the entity as a whole.
I was tasked to evaluate the current state of Amazon’s DOTCOM and mobile experience and provide research and insight on low-hanging improvements that could be made to tailor a users experience from onboarding to check out. I was also asked to think broadly about future use cases for Amazon and how they could expand their shopping experiences.
Research and Findings
We conducted our research though user interviews, surveys and testimonials as well as through published articles and studies on consumer habits with Amazon and it’s competitors. What we found was that:
By understanding that a large majority of users interact with Amazon on mobile over the desktop DOTCOM, an easy place for us to start to dissect and look for low-hanging fruit is on the mobile experience.
“Design for trust” is somewhat of a hot phrase but very much has design value. The more perceived and tangible trust that a company can manufacture, the higher the engagement users and customers will award the company.
These findings gave us our staring point from and immediate design direction, but we were also tasked with looking to the future and how Amazon could capture more market share in emerging markets or technologies. To look for these opportunities we evaluated where the company was dedicating its resources and where consumer spending habits were emerging.
low hanging fruit - mobile
Armed with this knowledge we evaluated the current shopping experience on mobile and looked for areas that do not include the technologies that Amazon was investing in or where their tech had not been incorporated.
The first pass was a simple design look and feel update. Many users feedback was around how the existing design system felt dated.
We prioritized the content structure to be around information that users most often looked for: shipping times, price and pricing information, reccomendations, and CTAs (with the priority being on ‘buy now’ vs. reviewing a cart)
After our pass at this design refresh we evaluated how existing tech was not being utilized in product search. The users still had to rely on typing in a product query and scrolling to find their desired product
Current search experience. Open search bar for user input of text, predictive search is integrated
With the emphasis on furthering the Alexa Voice technology we thought this would be a great place to incorporate the tech in the search experience. We also leveraged Amazon’s existing technology within an internal FBA tool where a seller can scan a bar code to list a product to their storefront. We changed this to be consumer facing where a consumer can scan a barcode to search for a specific product on Amazon to look for better pricing than what may be in store.
Proposed design change with existing UI and design system
future state - desktop
Once we had identified easy changes to the mobile experience we looked more holistically at the direction eCommerce was taking and user purchasing habits. Amazon currently gathers large amounts of data about personal spending habits based on many factors including: geographic location, seasonal needs/habits, gender, interests, etc. However, this data is gathered post sign up. Amazon does not push product or video interests based off of user provided data on sign up.
Current Landing experience
With provided user data a landing experience could change where products and interests are pushed immediately and can be refined over time with the inputs of their consumer habits.
An under utilized market from Amazon is within the User Generated Content (UGC) space. Many consumers purchase items that they see used or reviewed by their favorite YouTube personalities. YouTubers would frequently provide Amazon links to products for their viewers to purchase from - which they would receive a small commission from each purchase. Often they would even create their own curated Amazon Stores with relevant products to their subscribers
At the time Amazon was investing heavily in their Prime production studio and their movies and TV shows, and while they provided this service for UGC creators, they are missing out on additional revenue by allowing YouTube to be the host of the content; rather than Amazon. Our proposal was for Amazon to build their own UGC site to integrate with their shopping ecosystem
If users click the magnifying glass button in the upper left of the video, Amazon will display the products the user has in their “store” for their viewers to purchase.
Users can also go to the creators “store” or “profile page” where they can learn more about the creator and channel as well as purchase products the creator recommends and listen to music play lists they have created and watch related content to their channel.
