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
*with some features available on mobile
Journey Mapping, Conception, Solution System Mapping, UX Strategy
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.
