The Goal

Lead design for the Amazon retail site in India and build a team in Bangalore to launch the business and support innovation of new features for the unique needs of the Indian marketplace. Win on actual and perceived shopping experiences in India by addressing shopper needs and building out a mobile-first shopping experience across site/app navigation, product discovery and decision-making, checkout, and customer engagement.

Key Outcomes

The Amazon India Design team integrated primary Amazon retail features and services optimized for the Indian consumer. In addition to the launch of the Amazon.in retail site, we successfully delivered – Amazon Prime, the mobile phone trade-in program, scheduled delivery, Amazon Pay, and Prime Now. Amazon India surpassed Flipkart as the preferred online retail destination for metropolitan Indian consumers for the first time since 2014. In 2014, 30% of our survey respondents reported buying from Amazon; in 2016, 76% said they did. (Meena, Satish, et al. “The Indian Online Retail Market: Amazon Versus Everyone Else.” Forrester, 10 July 2017, go.forrester.com/blogs/17-04-11-the_indian_online_retail_market_amazon_versus_everyone_else/.)

Roles & Responsibilities

As the Design Manager, I:

• Built a Design Team for Amazon.in and AmazonBusiness.in in Bangalore. This included hiring, defining team org, roles, and responsibilities, and resource planning for organizational expansion.

• Supported design projects and features for online, mobile, and the innovation of unique new retail businesses for Indian customers.

• Led multi-discipline, (Product, Engineering, Executive) collaboration to deliver extraordinary customer experiences in the Indian marketplace.

• Provided customer inputs, design support, and feedback to drive the development of the online and mobile CX roadmap and features.

• Supported development of Mobile-First features and shared the unique customer needs of the Indian marketplace with the core Amazon Retail Product and Design Teams.

• Contributed design artifacts and managed a design team for the launch of a new web property in India, Amazon Business. 

I led the Amazon Indian Design team to iterate and launch new features to address the Indian customer in the following key areas:

Mobile Gateway

India has a high share of customers who browse vs. search. We wanted to ensure that customers could easily discover the extensive product selection, improve product navigation, and provide more browse entry points. In addition, surfacing more selection upfront would support our goal to be the largest online store in India. We launched multiple experiments to inform our direction for how to optimize the browse experience on the Amazon.in home screen (Amazon Gateway). An example of some of the features that increased sales conversion: badging to indicate price savings, custom banners to promote deals, and the addition of trust messaging to guarantee product quality.

Search CX

We leveraged customer feedback, usability studies, and benchmarking to highlight gaps in the search view, browse, and filter experiences.

Examples of issues:

• Smaller images on search than competitors

• Low discoverability of filters (Filters usage on mobile was 1.82% of search view vs. 13.59% for PC)

• Fewer filter options available compared to the competition (51 vs. 92 for 18 categories compared)

Deals Strategy

In India, customers are price sensitive and used to a shopping culture that focuses on negotiating good deals. Deals are an essential lever to acquire new customers and compared to other locales, the percentage of sales acquired through discounts and deals is higher.

 We collected customer insights through purchase data and user testing to launch a Deals CX designed for the Indian marketplace. The UX included:

• A brighter, livelier, visual design to appeal to the Indian customer

• Prominent discount amount display

• Added icons to assist customers who are not comfortable shopping in English

Launch AmazonBusiness.in

I supported the launch of the wholesale business site, AmazonBusiness.in. In addition to delivering multiple features as an Independent Contributor (IC), I managed 2 UX designers. Deliverables included sitemaps, wireframes, and design flows for a new Amazon site in India. Tasks included:

• Naming strategy

• Presenting feature and site design walk-throughs to leadership

• Working with the Product Team on roadmap and feature design specifications

• Reviewing and providing feedback on UX Design