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Personalizing Amazon

Sr UX Designer

Personalizing Amazon

Personalizing Amazon

The Problem

A major issue customers face when shopping on Amazon is the overwhelming abundance of choices, making it difficult to confidently find relevant products quickly. Customer are left to filter through products inefficiently and repeatedly input preferences, leading to a time-consuming and less enjoyable shopping process that aren’t easily picked-up at a later time.

Company
Amazon
Timeline

August 2021 – May 2022 (10 months)

Role

Lead Sr. UX Designer

Tools
  • Figma
  • UserTesting
TL;DR

Turning what customers had already browsed into a more relevant Amazon, launched in 20 countries and patented.

Research

Existing UX & Research Insights

  1. Top clicked feature Customers most commonly interact with search if nothing on the landing page catches their attention.
  2. Unhelpful navigation Categories in the top nav are static, resulting in irrelevant links for some customers.
  3. Mistaken for ads Customers saw dashboard cards as generic ads, since they lacked relevance to interests, needs, or preferences.
The Amazon app home screen on a phone, with markers 1 to 3 on the search bar, the category navigation, and the dashboard cards below a Fire TV promotion.
  1. Undiscoverable browsing history Customers expect to find their browsing history closely tied to their account settings.
  2. Vast amount of settings The account settings menu requires time and effort for customers to understand and navigate, with browsing history nowhere on the list of options.
The Amazon app Your Account screen on a phone, with markers 4 and 5 on the account heading and the long list of order and settings options.

UX Research

Understanding the Problem

I reviewed prior studies that included customer anecdotes and engagement metrics specifically focusing on browsing history and relevancy of recommendations. The hope was to identify opportunities for leveraging customer intent and personalization to improve the experience.

Stop showing me products I’ve already bought! I don’t need any more toasters… or TVs… since I bought them on Amazon already.

Amazon Customer, Mobile App Feedback, 2019

Research

Discovering Opportunity

I found examples of personalized shopping experiences to inspire and reference as I moved into designing.

  1. The lululemon app home screen on a phone, with a “Because You Like” row of recommended shirts lifted out and marked 1.

    A feed of recommendations based on engagement

  2. The lululemon app on a phone, with a “Where You Left Off” card of recently viewed socks lifted out and marked 2.

    Recent browsing history easily discoverable

Common Themes

  • Inline display of browsing history
  • Preference / interest based recommendations
  1. The Nike app shop screen on a phone, with a “Recently Viewed” row of Metcon shoes and their prices lifted out and marked 3.

    Highly-visible browsing history with prices / sales

  2. The Nike app on a phone, with a “Shop My Interests” card of Running and Training tiles lifted out and marked 4.

    Interest based shopping helps build community and identity

Ideation

Wireframe Explorations

I started from a high-level view of how customers typically start their shopping journeys on Amazon to understand areas of opportunity to incorporate personalized content, when relevant to the customer’s intent.

Product Goals

  1. Re-engage with recently browsed categories
  2. Universal ingress
Homepage
A greyscale wireframe of the Amazon app homepage: a “Keep browsing” row under the search bar, marked B, and a row of cards — “Keep shopping for running shoes”, “Pick up where you left off” — under the hero, marked A.
  1. Search – Empty state
    A greyscale wireframe of the Amazon search screen before a query: a “Keep browsing” row of Running shoes, LED TVs and Desk chairs, marked A, over recent searches and the keyboard.
  2. Search results
    A greyscale wireframe of Amazon search results with a “Similar products you’ve browsed” row above the results, marked A.

Customer Journey Flow

Area of Opportunity

When mapping the customer journeys, I noticed an opportunity to take customers to a new type of landing page that could serve several benefits.

Benefits of a Landing Page

  1. Re-engage with multiple browsed products
  2. Easily compare products
  3. Provide helpful recommendations

Landing Page Layouts

Two directions for the new page. Both open on what the customer was just browsing; Layout A follows with what is selling in that category, Layout B with recommendations drawn from the same history. The markers show where each benefit lands.

  1. Re-engage with browsed products
  2. Compare products side by side
  3. Helpful recommendations
  1. Landing page – Layout A
    A greyscale wireframe of landing page layout A: a “Keep browsing running shoes” row marked 1 and 2, then “Current top sellers” marked 3, then “Runners’ Magazine Picks”.
  2. Landing page – Layout B
    A greyscale wireframe of landing page layout B: the same “Keep browsing running shoes” row marked 1 and 2, then a taller “Helpful recommendations” card marked 3.

Customer Journey Flow / Wireframes

  1. Homepage
    The homepage wireframe, with a tap on the “Pick up where you left off” card.
  2. Search
    The search wireframe, with a tap on LED TVs in the “Keep browsing” row.
  3. Search results
    The search results wireframe, with a tap on a product in “Similar products you’ve browsed”.
  4. Landing page
    The landing page wireframe, with a tap on a product under “Current top sellers”.
  5. Product details page
    The product details page wireframe.

Outcome

What Came of It

Built for a recommendation system serving 500M+ customers.

  • PatentUS 11,698,940, issued 2023
  • 20Countries, launched worldwide
  • 88%Of taps went to links already in view

Learnings

Looking Back

The first screen does the work.

Nearly nine in ten taps went to what was visible without scrolling. What’s in view is the experience; anything below it has to be worth the scroll.

Speed is part of the design.

A preview only helps if it appears the moment it’s asked for, so how item details were fetched and held became part of the interaction design, and the basis of the patent.

Next project Livestream Shopping on Amazon

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