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
Visual Design, Interaction Design, Near-term Launch Support
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.