OUGD504 - SB2 - Design for Screen - Amazon Research

Before setting a brief for this project some research had to be made into Amazon to try and find a problem that needs to be resolved. As Amazon is such a huge, successful marketplace, I wanted to challenge myself to really pick apart the site and find aspects that, not only designers but users, think are problems. Some research into their ethos, demographics and statistics were also made to ensure that problems raised are true on a global level.



Only Studios explained that it is very important to understand a company in terms of statistics and demographics. This influences the design decisions taken as the main focus has to be put on the target audience. A few points found regarding Amazon in the past year can be seen below:

• Nearly half of web shoppers go directly to Amazon for product searches - A study by BloomReach in 2015 found that 44% of online shoppers go directly to Amazon before checking any other site. This has increased since 2012 by 14%.

• During the 2015 holiday season, nearly 70% of Amazon.com customers used a mobile device to make purchases - The amount of people who use Amazon’s mobile app has doubled from the previous year. As such a large customer base uses mobiles/tablets, my design process should heavily focus on these formats before a desktop format.

• There are tens of millions of Amazon Prime members, and that number is growing fast - Amazon Prime is a premium subscription service that offers its members a variety of perks, including access to Amazon’s online movie and music streaming libraries, and unlimited image storage on Amazon’s cloud storage database for £79 a year. The service also includes
   free expedited shipping that allows Prime members to get their goods in under 2 days. According to Business Insider, there are over 55 million Prime members, and that number is growing faster every day.

• As of 2015, there are 304 million active accounts on Amazon - Unlike smaller companies, Amazon has to consider millions of people when thinking about their target audience. The design treatment therefore has to be univerally accessible to all ages.

• Online shoppers who don’t use Amazon are motivated by different things than are Amazon shoppers - Non-Amazon shoppers are people who are motivated strongly by a sense of belonging, indexing 54% higher than Amazon shoppers. This trait is especially strong with millenials who index 160% over the average for being motivated by a sense of belonging. Additionally, non-Amazon shoppers care about a knowledgeable staff and, interestingly, an easy return policy. In other words, non-Amazon shoppers are more about the personal touch of smaller online retailers. Compared to non-Amazon shoppers, those who do use Amazon are much more likely to represent the overall Internet population (mostly because it’s a much larger group of people.) They are though, more likely to make impulse purchases and are motivated to make brand decisions that help their self-esteem and self-image. Millenial Amazon shoppers are even more motivated by self-image and are further motivated to purchase things if they are fun, exciting and rewarding.

• The demographic of users is split almost exactly evenly between men and women - This further highlights how the design treatment needs to appeal to almost everyone, in terms of the target audience. Considerations will need to be made so that the site/app does not lean more towards a certain age group/gender.

• Amazon uses analytics to their advantage - They know what their shoppers are doing, how they are shopping, what they like, and have a profile for each shopper with a personalized product assortment. It’s something that other retailers of all types can also accomplish, much of which is based on already available data that just needs to be tapped into.