Amazon's User Experience

Presentation

Global Assessment

● Home page contains all information necessary and is credible

● Easy to navigate● User opinion highly

valuable given the volume they have obtained

● International sales, international payment options great

● Purchasing process simple and easy

5 Best FunctionalitiesContent tailored to users: Amazon analyzes your site activity to give you recommendations about products you may like. It helps discovering interesting products.

Sample products: A big challenge with buying online is not having the product in your hands. When you buy books on Amazon, that experience is nicely replicated by the “Look Inside” and “Get a Sample” features.

Customer reviews: Amazon has a large base of customers that make an active review community. They offer simple but powerful features to go through those reviews and analyze the opinions.

Other sellers integrated: Amazon wants you to find everything on their site, even if they don't sell it. They integrate different sellers offering new and used items. This expands their offering significantly.

One-click shopping: Users can set up their accounts to make one-click purchases and skip all the process of typing and confirming information.

3 Pain PointsToo many items on one page: When strictly speaking about user experience, a regular Amazon page is extremely cluttered. It can contain more than 250 links and buttons.

Difficult to find uncommon items: Amazon has millions of products, but unless you know the exact name, you will only see the most popular and bestselling items. What's the value in such a large offering if you can't find it?

Lack of clarity of who is the seller, what are the terms: When purchasing from 3rd party sellers, it is not always clear who you are buying from, or if they offer the same service.

ImprovementsPain Point Improvements

Too many items on one page

Allow users to choose which information to show on product pages. Make items as bestselling list, recently viewed items, and “customers who bought...”, optional. Offer a more visually pleasing product-list view, like expandable lists (i.e. show top 3 best sellers, and a link to “Show more”).

Difficult to find uncommon items

Improve advanced search options, currently too limited. Implement Netflix's recommendation system, where users can rate books they've read, and mark the ones that are interesting/not interesting to them.

Lack of clarity of who is seller, what are terms

Add a page in the purchase process when buying from 3rd parties where it shows exactly what's different vs. buying from Amazon directly.

New Feature

Social integration for automatic wish list sharing

and group buying

Connect with Facebook and all your friends can access your wish

list. For birthdays, if you want a $500 TV that no one would buy for you, 20 friends can chip in with $25

and make it a group gift.

I just contributed $25 to David Gracia's birthday gift. Click here to contribute http:

//amzn.com/bday574

New Feature - ResearchTypes of questions to be answered:

■ What are the occasions people would collaborate on a gift for?

■ Do people really want to collaborate on gift buying? is there a real demand?

■ If so, How many people need to collaborate on the gift?

■ Are our current payment methods sufficient?

■ How can the organizer send out the gift sharing invitation?

■ What tools do gift organizers need to manage the group?

■ What if someone doesn’t pay on time for the gift to reach the recipient by the date in question? e.g., can the organizer pay the balance?

■ What kind of reminders do we need to send to participants?

■ How can we maximize on the opportunity?

1. Understand if users need such a tool, and how would they use it

○ Qualitative research: interviews, focus groups

2. Analyze technical feasibility to make sure it's possible and practical

New Feature - Design & Test

DESIGN

1. Integrate with the Gift Organizer.

2. Use qualitative research to improve user experience. Users must find it easy to use.

3. Make adjustments and finalize for testing.

TEST

1. Launch a pilot on Amazon's US site, asking for extensive feedback for all users that try it.

2. Promote via social media marketing and encourage sharing.

3. Use Google's Website Optimizer for A/B testing until strong feedback is gathered.

Website 1: Homepage

● Menu bar makes it easy to go to specific sections easily.● Not friendly enough for new users. ● Major focus on Kindles, most important product for Amazon

and all time best-selling item. ● Advertisement on the right side is poorly targeted and

unnecessary.

Website 2: Books

● Menu bar has a complete list of categories, but that makes it very long and not very friendly.

● In general, the page is cluttered, the number of products can be it can be overwhelming.

● Major focus on bestselling and recently viewed items is good.

Website 3: Product

● Product information is complete, but very spread out. ● Pricing information very clear.● Product is featured correctly. ● Suggestions of items powered by Amazon's customer

information are good and well placed below the item.

Mobile deviceAmazon iPhone App

● Familiar style● Very easy to navigate● Fully functional and all

sections present● Interesting new options that

take full advantage of mobile:

○ Barcode scanner○ Amazon Remembers

■ Photo based search■ 3 items tested■ worked each time■ integration with

standard web in beta