Amazon
Seller Central
I joined Amazon in March 2020, supporting the Amazon Seller Central (web and mobile) experiences (mostly FBA experiences). Below are 3 projects I did at Amazon.
FBA Storage Limit Increase Manager
The design of a brand new tool on sellercentral.amazon.com for Amazon FBA Sellers to request additional storage space at Amazon fulfillment centers.
Platform: responsive web (desktop)
My role: the only designer
Timeframe: 3 months
Sellers who sell products on Amazon and use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) ship products to Amazon fulfillment centers, and enjoy the fast Prime delivery and customer service Amazon offers. However sometimes Sellers receive storage space limits, and are not able to send more inventory in due to the limits.
The Problem
Why do we need this new tool? For FBA Sellers who receive storage limits, while a portion of them are fine with the limits most of the time, many are constrained by the limits and wish to grow faster with higher limits, or have the opportunity to influence how Amazon set the caps.
The User Story and Business Requirements
Let's use a hypothetical Seller example here, Nathan Pratt, who has been receiving storage limits since Q2 2020. Nathan plans to inbound products to Amazon for his upcoming peak season, but was constrained by the limit. He can't inbound more with the limit there.
While Nathan currently has a handful of alternatives such as remove some inventory at fulfillment centers (so he could inbound more), we want to provide this new tool for Sellers like Nathan to request higher storage limits by letting us know the maximum fee they are willing to pay in order to get the storage space.
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Journey Mapping and Concept Exploration
To better understand Sellers' current experience when receiving storage limits, I mapped the customer journey, led workshops with the product manager and identified potential Seller frictions and the initial UX strategy for the project.
After the initial mapping, I explored a few very different concepts, identified high-level big questions I had for Sellers, as well as initial assumptions to validate, and created low-fi concepts to be shared to Sellers in the upcoming roundtable study that would help us find the answers.
Concept mock shared to Sellers in the roundtable session
Qualitative Seller Study and Iterations
The initial Seller roundtable reveals both Sellers' interests and worries for the new tool - they loved the opportunity to get extra space, but were concerned about the uncertainties in terms of the "gamy" feeling of the tool.
To advocate for more positive sentiments, I explored and discussed the alternatives with the product team, such as setting a flat price for Sellers to purchase storage instead of forcing them to choose their own bid price and compete with each other. Unfortunately, because of the fluctuation of the storage supply and demand, the business can't risk setting a flat price, but was willing to provide some reward to Sellers who use the extra space well.
I then explored options for this new "performance credit" idea, and defined what we wanted to validate the most at this point after reviewing with product partners, leadership, as well as peer designers, and carefully crafted prototypes and concepts to test with Sellers in the following usability study.
2 prototypes Design A & B (InVision prototype) and a concept mock shared to Sellers in usability study
After speaking to 8 Sellers of our targeted segmentations, I shared the new findings with the product manager, devs and also the science team, discussed product positioning such as who this tool should be able to help, and what use cases are out of scope and what do we do about these use case, as well as what help we can provide to help Sellers decide prices.
On the other hand, since I found understandability is one of the biggest challenges based on the study results, I defined design strategies regarding understandability, and made design decisions and adjustments accordingly.
The Solution System, Success Measurements and Phased Plans
Designing this one tool will solve the problem for some, but I always want to make sure an experience is connected to the whole ecosystem and whoever using this tool will have a seamless experience navigating the entire system, even if this tool isn't the right solution for this person.
FBA Conversion Redesign
The redesign of enrolling products into Fulfillment by Amazon process on sellercentral.amazon.com.
Platform: responsive web
My role: the only designer
Timeframe: 2 months
Sellers who sell products on Amazon and use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) ship products to Amazon fulfillment centers, and enjoy the fast Prime delivery and customer service Amazon offers. Sellers have to enroll their products, whether new or existing ones, into Fulfillment by Amazon, which is the conversion experience. The current conversion flow is outdated, causing a lot of frictions, and disconnected from the overall FBA journey. A redesign is in need since the abandon rate of the conversion flow is very high (22.5% sessions were abandoned worldwide in 2019).
The Problem
Why redesign? Of course we want to increase the conversion success rate (reduce abandoned sessions), but first we need to get to the root of the problem: why are Sellers dropping the sessions?
Based on the initial audit of the current experience, and insights from previous research, I mapped out the frictions of the current flow with the product manager, and had the following assumptions:
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Discoverability issues: this is not directly connected to dropping (since Sellers didn't even find the ingress to the flow), but it's contributing to the low conversion rate
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Irrelevant and non-required information being asked throughout the process
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Usability issues: confusing actions and navigation
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Fragmented processes: again this is not directly related to dropping, but the conversion flow is disconnected to previous processes and next steps, leaving Sellers not knowing what they are doing and what to do next
Usability Study: Why Are They Dropping?
In order to understand:
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Why Sellers drop when using the current conversion experience
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Sellers' conversion behaviors (how often, and how many products each time)
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How Sellers think of the 2 redesign explorations (a product-level one page conversion experience and an improved session-level conversion workflow)
I created the study plan, built a few prototypes, and launched a UserTesting.com study.
Prototypes of Design A & B (InVision prototypes) shared in the usertesting.com study
And here are the key findings generated from the 15 testing sessions:
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Time and efforts is the key reason Sellers dropping their session
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Overwhelming navigation making it difficult for first time users
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Fragmented processes do not resonate with Sellers’ understanding of ”enrolling my products into FBA” process
Based on the findings, here are the opportunities and design strategies I identified:
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Reduce efforts, only collect information to unblock each listing from inbound
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Improve navigation to help Sellers stay on top of what needs to be done for each listing, and next steps
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Seamless transitions in and out of the workflow
The refined experience vision
Moving Towards The Simplified Conversion Experience: The Phased Plan
The current flow has been there for years without any major updates. Sellers have developed their own workarounds and even internal tutorials in their businesses. While participants in our study expressed interests in the simplified design, some are less excited about changes since they were already forced to get used to the existing one, and are less willing to invest in learning new processes.
To move towards a simplified conversion experience and test our assumptions gradually without affecting Sellers' day-to-day routines much, we created phased plans to test the product and UX assumptions bit by bit.
The Mobile Appeal Experience
A more inclusive appeal experience by leveraging advantages of mobile devices and designing an account appeals experience on mobile.
Platform: mobile
My role: the only designer
Timeframe: 2 weeks
Sellers who sell products on Amazon sometimes find their accounts being suspended for various reasons, and many are eligible to appeal and reactivate by submitting required information. While it's just natural to writing and submitting the initial appeal on desktop Seller Central, Sellers could be benefited from being able to view, edit, track the appeal and provide additional information on the go with the Seller mobile app.
The Problem
Why mobile? Account suspensions are something that happen to most Sellers at some point, and some might even find it happens pretty often. Having the desktop experience is just fine, but providing (almost) the same experience on mobile not only makes it more inclusive by including Sellers who have limited access to desktop computers, but also gives more transparency and control to Sellers who use both desktop and mobile Seller Central - they will have a more accessible appeal experience as well. Solve for one, extend to many.
The current desktop Appeal experience
What Can Mobile Do?
Currently, Sellers will be informed about account suspension on a very prominent top banner on Seller Central mobile homepage. But the mobile appeal experience stops here - yes, it's a notification, and notification only, it takes you to a plain text page telling you to go to the desktop experience to continue.
I was super excited to design a mobile experience for the account appeals process, but because making this experience accessible on mobile app is so essential, the product team has a near-term launch goal, and I had to dive deep into the appeal process and recommend an initial mobile experience in 2 weeks. So instead of designing from scratch, I audited the desktop experience, and brainstormed what mobile advantages I can leverage for this experience, rather than just plainly move it to the mobile platform.
The top banner is actually pretty helpful when we spoke to Sellers about account suspension experiences, and what else can we achieve with the mobile platform for the appeal experience?
Inform status. The banner can do more than just informing Sellers about account suspension.
Display a more reasonable information hierarchy. Critical information such as step-by-step instructions can be more easily located and reviewed on a mobile screen, while less useful information, such as the deactivation notification message, which many Sellers found it too generic to be helpful at all, are displayed as a link to another page to save space and respect focus on the current page.
Upload documents (pictures). Many documents required can be as simple as a picture to capture, mobile makes document uploading just a snap away.
Track appeal progress on the go. The appeal status will be updated on the homepage top banner. Sellers can also go into the appeal page, view responses from Amazon and provide additional information on the go.
Reactivate instantly. While many Sellers have to go through the general appeal process of submitting information required, some are eligible for instant reactivation (the self-reinstatement process). Since the instant reactivation process is just a few checkboxes and a submit button, mobile gives Seller the option to reactivate anywhere, anytime, to reduce the risk of being suspended for long and losing the potential sales opportunity during the time.