Amazon — a case study in user experience
Amazon is often heralded to be an example of UX best practice for ecommerce websites. When it launched, I can remember all anyone talked about was how easy to use it was and how it made online shopping so simple.
Amazon’s mission statement hasn’t changed:
We aim to be Earth’s most customer centric company. Our mission is to continually raise the bar of the customer experience by using the internet and technology to help consumers find, discover and buy anything, and empower businesses and content creators to maximise their success.
But is this still true now? A lot has happened in the two decades since Amazon fist launched in the UK — and while its website retains many familiar features, there are also many examples of how it’s evolved and changed.
Does it still reflect its mission statement? Using Chaffey and Chadwick’s (2019) online customer experience pyramid as a framework, let’s take a look.
Positives
Amazon’s website scores extremely well according to the user experience success factors, this reflects Amazon’s customer-centric mission statement. In particular its website makes it extremely easy to find products, read product details, browse reviews and ratings and then purchase them.
It also performs well when looking at the relational needs of customers — the website loads very fast and there are hardly ever issues around access because of traffic volumes such as on Black Friday or Prime Day.
Negatives
Amazon’s mission statement focuses its website design on customer service with a focus on utilitarian design over creative design. There is very little in the way of bright colours, videos or sounds (something that is often featured on brands’ websites). This is both a positive as it allows Amazon to differentiate its competitors on its user experience, but it is also a negative.
There is very little actual branding on the website — and indeed, Amazon isn’t famous for its branding (to be fair, this may be difficult to do as the main physical brand brown parcels). Arguably this could be seen as a weakness of Amazon — without the same commitment to the emotional needs/wants of customers, Amazon is operating on a service-design model. That is to say, a cheaper alternative or more customer-centric offering could come along and disrupt the market and replace Amazon.
Analysis summary table
