Amazon App Redesign

Overview

Amazon is one of the most convenient e-shops that saves me a tremendous amount of time and energy to set up a new home and live an efficient and productive life in an unfamiliar city. However, the customer experience and visuals still have space to improve and update to fit users' use and shopping habits. 

As the world’s largest online retailer (Segal, 2022), Amazon is quickly expanding in other domains, including web service, physical retail stores, and subscription services. It has a diverse business model and posted $469 billion in sales and $33 billion in net income in 2021 (Cuofano, 2022)

Recently, I moved to a new home. I bought home essentials, lighting, decorations, clothing, makeup organizers, working essentials, and more through Amazon mobile app and website. I have been using the Amazon app for more than eight years as most people living in rural and urban areas are Amazon’s loyal customers. The app's mobile vision has not changed much since the first time I used the app. 

This project aims to increase Amazon users’ shopping confidence and shopping efficiency.

Duration
2 weeks

Team
Sole Project (Passion Project)

My Role
I took the entire part from User Research, User Experience, and Visual Design.

Tool
Figma

How do you improve shopping confidence and efficiency by redesigning the Amazon mobile app?

Mission

Increasing Amazon users’ shopping confidence and shopping efficiency by redesigning the app’s user experience and visual elements.

Competitive Research

JD.com

The app lets customers buy fresh groceries, household essentials, the latest tech, and more. The app has delivery, pickup, and shipping options to satisfy customers’ needs, whether they are shopping in-store or online.

Interfaces:

  • Shop

  • My Items

  • Search

  • Services

  • Account

JD.com is the largest online retailer in China, which is owned by Alibaba. It is one of the industry leaders in online shopping through its quality, authenticity, and diverse products, like fresh food, electronics, apparel, and cosmetics (JD.com). The app makes it easy for users to find products, make an order, check the order status, comment, and post product reviews.

Interfaces:

  • Home page

    • Search product

    • Category

    • Discount promotion

    • Recommendation/event/live streaming

    • Single product recommendation (discovery)

  • New Product

    • Promotion

    • Category

    • Product display

  • Discovery 

  • Shopping cart

  • Account

Walmart

Shein

Shein app has ranked number 2 in the Shopping category in the apple app store. It is a fun and affordable online shopping platform for clothing, accessories, and home products. Customers can buy everything trendy in the app.

Interfaces

  • Shop

  • Search/ Category

  • Account

  • Shopping Bag

Inspiration Research

Comprehension Research

Testimonial - blogger / Tech reviewer

Cons: 

  1. Too much information on the product detail page: it makes the page long and hard to track

  2. Many parts are repeated on the same page: What other items do people buy and products related to this item and recommendations have the same information(Jia & Wang, 2020). Users may feel difficult to view the page, easy to lose navigation on the page, and need to scroll back or down to find the information they need.

  3. The UI has space to improve. The buttons are old-fashioned, and some icons are mismatched. The information for different projects in the “related to this item” section is not aligned with each other

Pros: 

  1. Augmented Reality technology: The app also has the AR function to view the product in their room to help consumers to make buying decisions

  2. Customer review and filter function: In the Customer reviews section, people can view and filter customer comments and see the positive and critical comments and reviews they care about most before purchasing the product. It is efficient and easy to use

  3. The customer rating shortcut on the top is not obvious enough and easy to miss

Amazon Mobile lets users view products by department, compare prices, and read reviews, and people can share items via the shared menu. (Jia & Wang, 2020). Amazon provides users with a variety of information that is relative to the product, as to confidence in users' buying process. 

The information includes: 

  • pictures of the product from different angles

  • option of quantity and size of the product

  • price and delivery time

  • descriptions of the product, 

  • product ratings

  • frequently bought together 

  • relative products

  • recommendations 

  • comparison

  • relative brands

  • customer questions 

  • Customer reviews

The cart page is nice and clean. The users can easily find this page's prices, quantities, and whether they are in stock. However, the space and differences between the shopping carts and saving for later are not distinctive enough. Consumers might feel confusing when they look at two sections. People cannot pick some of the products in the cart to pay. For a convenient checking out experience,  there might need a function to let customers choose selective products to pay for.

User feedback - App store / Google store 

User feedback 3

  1. The product tracking and management system are confusing. It is hard to find the manage, cancel or refund functions on the order track page

  2. It is easy to see good reviews, but It is difficult to see bad reviews or the reviews that help customers to make a fair decision from both phone and computer ends

User Feedback 1

  1. The pop-ups disrupt the shopping experience

  2. The pop-up shortcuts are misleading and do not fit consumers’ shopping habits. It feels like the app keeps reminding the next step and makes the shopping experience less pleasant and frustrating

  3. The ads on top are overwhelming

User feedback 4

  1. Ability through different devices like iPhones, Ipad, and websites (I saw several comments mention this issue)

  2. Like the full picture of the product than a partial view.

User feedback 2

  1. A wishlist is hard to locate and hard to make comparisons between two items. The customer needs to open a new screen to look up the items they save.

  2. The customer review pictures are hard to access. 

  3. “Next page” bottom on searching item interfaces slow the user’s product searching process

User feedback 5

  1. Straight forward and easy to use: next day and free shipping, lost items, returns, and refunds.

  2. Easy to find a solution for customer issues

  3. Amazon video and kindle are great features to use

User feedback 6

  1. Loyal customer.

  2. Variety of products with many options and selections with different money range groups. Find products of good quality in the same price range. 

  3. Good customer service

Usage analysis by myself

Home

The positive experience with this interface is the search bar and category at the top of the interface. If the user has a clear search or buying target, they can easily find the product through the search bar or by looking up products in a specific category. The promotion/notification section below shows the news and events. Although the hero image seems to be cut off on the right edge, and with the promoted product modules below the image, there are some imbalances in this section.

Account

The function of this page is a bit confusing to me. It might relate to the navigation bar icons on the bottom of the interface without a text explanation. Due to users' shopping process, the manage order, buy again, account, and your lists should be after the cart function.
I like the four buttons at the top of the page. Users can easily find the place they are trying to find without scrolling for a longer time. However, the visual shortcuts buttons are outdated, and the sequences of your orders/keep shopping/ buy again/ your lists/ your account/gift card balance did not match the shortcut sequences.

Cart

The cart function is straightforward, and users can easily manage their products in Amazon fresh and Shopping Carts. Users do not have the option to check out selected items in the shopping cart. If a person wants to check out, they only have the chance to check out the full shopping cart. It is time costuming and diseases the using efficiency.
Saved for later function can also be optimized with a filter or manage function for customers to find the products they were looking for. I have 156 items in saving for a later section in this screenshot. It is very difficult to find the product I saved two weeks ago and delete unwanted items.

And More

The drew component at the bottom of the page shows the orders, buy again, account, and lists functions, which are the same as the second main interface. It seems too unnecessary to put all the functions twice in the main interfaces. The customized shortcuts based on my habits are great features to locate the items and deals I am looking for.
Moreover, the drew bar deprioritizes the other functions, and there are many categories on this page similar to the first main interface category.

Product Detail

The product name, photos, and the price at the beginning of the product detail page show the basic or main profile of the product. The users familiar with this product might make the buying decision at this point. The manufacturer function can be combined with the image gallery section, or the design should be separated into more sections. The information is detailed and complete, but the page is still long, and difficult to locate different functions.

Business Model

Amazon's mission is "to serve consumers through online and physical stores and focus on selection, price, and convenience" (Amazon.com). Technological Model is an E-commerce platform with various products at a compatible price. As various sellers join Amazon's third-party services, various products are offered at competitive prices, which brings more users to use the Amazon e-shop platform (Björklund, 2014). Amazon Web Services, e-commerce, third-party services, subscriptions, and advertising are the main components of Amazon.

Target Audience

Persona

Target user group and demographics

Amazon Prime subscribers and loyal customers are the younger generations

Amazon is the 9th global internet traffic in 2022. Target users for Amazon are the younger generation who access and visit the internet frequently. Amazon Prime subscribers are majorly 35 to 44 years old. As the internet and smart devices are popular, Amazon’s target group extends to all ages (Thomas, 2021). 

The personalized shopping experience is one of the main selling points of Amazon. Amazon customers are loyal to the retailer and frequently make purchases. Amazon Prime subscribers buy more products than non-prime customers. 48% of U.S customers use the Amazon app or web version more than once a week; 89 % of consumers in the U.S visit the site at least once per month (Thomas, 2021). 

The main factors that entice consumers

  1. Price: 82% of customers claim that they shopped at Amazon because of its lower prices.

  2. Low shipping costs

  3. Positive product review

  4. Flexible return policy

  5. The Amazon website is easy to navigate

  6. Buy all the products from one site

Amazon’s target audiences are middle and upper-class consumers evenly split between genders. They have smart devices or computers in an age range between 18 to 44 years old with average salaries of $51k; 60% of Amazon’s target user group are from the U.S, and they prefer convenient online shopping, speedy delivery with competitive prices (Thomas, 2021).

Using habit and experience

The target user group prefers online shopping to in person to save money and time. Many target users are busy with work and do not have time to visit a physical store, and they will be more active with discounts and deals.

Revenue model

There are more than 200 million users per month and more than 101 million Amazon Prime subscribers in the U.S. (Visualcapitalist.com). Therefore, it is important to provide a better experience and service to the customers.

Advertising is the fastest growing segment in Amazon’s 2020 to 2021 revenue breakdown. The online stores’ income has also increased dramatically within one year (Yuen 2022).

Pain Points

Priority-oriented

Task-oriented

Impact comparisons

Ideation

User experience idea

App map

Collage

After conducting research, analysis, and user flow, I made this collage to conceptualize the structure and features of the app.

Wireframes

Home page

Search page

Cart

Account page

Product page

Finalized Design

Home

Simplify the structure of the pages to make the interfaces easy to follow and navigate

There are four main interfaces: home, search, cart, and account. The home page is the first page users will see when accessing the app. The top shows the user’s current location. The selection of categories and recommendations of the newest products, people near they save, and product discovery is listed based on people’s interests. The store code will pop up when the user enters an Amazon grocery shop. The user also can find the code by clicking the grocery button.

Search

The search page is for customers who know the specific product they are looking for to target it quickly. People who may not know their needs can find trending search keywords and recent view categories under the search page. Beneath the user also can find products by the department and by service.

Organize Information structure to fit customers’ shopping habits and shopping experiences

Cart

A user can choose the delivery address and search for added products on the top of the cart interface. Save for later, and the shopping list buttons will lead the user to the subpage. Beneath is where the user can manage their items in the cart. They can check out all the items in the cart or select products at once.

Optimize the product check-out process and provide a personalized shopping experience

Product detail

The app is intended to build a user’s shopping confidence. A user who is familiar with the product can buy the product directly to save shopping time. Search button, save for later, add cart, and check out will hoover on the entire product page. The main picture, rating, and basic information are listed at the top of the page. If users want to know more about the product, they can scroll down to view product reviews, details, and comparisons to similar products. The shortcuts allow users to locate the section they are looking for easily.

Increase app’s accessibility and build customers' shopping confidence

Account

The subscription is one of the essential Amazon revenue. Thus, it is located at the top of this interface to allow users to manage and view the benefits of Amazon prime. The search function will enable users to find the function they are looking for quickly. Users can manage their orders and find support on this page.

Improve UI elements and style that fit the company branding

Design System

Next Steps

This presentation only shows the keyframes related to the problem I want to solve. More valuable features like AR and AI support functions are not present in this case study. In the future, I can do more research, user interview, and testing to get more information and develop the app. The categories of products and services might be re-organized or re-phrased based on users' needs.