Overview Problem Goal Process Designs Outcome

Amazon books

Amazon Books is an online bookstore operated by Amazon, one of the world's largest online retailers. Amazon Books offers millions of books in both physical and digital formats, including fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, and audiobooks. Customers can browse and purchase books on the website, and the company also offers a range of services such as book reviews, personalized recommendations, and free shipping for eligible orders.

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Role

Product strategy, UX, UI

Time

2019

Platform

Mobile web/app, Desktop web

Problem

Business growth for all related business units

All book sellers wanted the platform to better serve their sales.

The detail page was a few years old and in need for an update to help each business unit (Kindle, paper, Audible...) to succeed. The teams from each unit have gathered together to get to a consensus and a solution.

Format visibility

Most books have multiple formats available on Amazon: Kindle, paperback, hard cover, Audible... and more. Not all formats are treated equally or in the most financially effective way. We needed to adjust the logic to maximize profit.

Outdated mechanism for the latest offering

A few business units such as Audible has established new subscription model, which was not supported by Amazon. We needed to find ways to represent that on Amazon.

Lack of extra information to attract customers

The old detail page had very limited space technically for promotional materials, hence leaving miss opportunities to make books more attractive to customers.

Missed opportunity of Amazon's unique data

There was great deal of big customer data that could serve the books, such as ranking, buying trend, author history... and more. This data could make the page more personalized and converting.

Goal

Better conversion for all business units

The common goal is elevate sales, but that could mean different things for different businesses.

It's clear we want to maximize the revenue for Amazon, but what is most financially meaningful to each business can be different. Therefore reaching alignment on the common set of success metrics and hence strategy was critical.

Process

Ideate and validate

Plan

Align on initial business goals among all the unit-specific ones. Then plan the design sprint.

Since every team had good past research to indicate their user and business opportunities, we could quickly onboard and start coming up with an actionable plan.

Ideate and test

Sketch feature by feature to start.

The detail page was really complex if we tried to look at it as a whole all the time. Therefore, we broke down components on the page and experiment with them separately so that we could prioritize ones that receive good reaction and come back for consolidation.

Experiment on visual mechanisms.

After a clear understanding of the most valuable components, we started testing different look and feel, as well as layout that could make all versions of the page cohesive.

Prototype and test interactions for usability in detail.

While testing styles, we also started testing different interaction types on the components we found valuable. We started mobile-first as there was an overwhelmingly large traffic via that device type.

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Designs

Complex business logic, but simple experience

Mobile

Desktop

Outcome

A clear conversion leap for multiple businesses

All business units received commercial benefits, including Audible.

With better visibility and more supporting material to highlight the benefit of spoken words for certain genres: fiction, autobiography, romance... We've seen clear elevation on sales. It was a clear win for this optimization.

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PAST PROJECTS

Audible Mobile Player

Amazon Books Marketplace

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