Amazon Store Pickup
Mobile-first / UI Design / User Testing
AMAZON STORE PICKUP
In March of 2020, amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon identified the customer need to buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS). While this was not a new concept for consumers, Amazon had never offered BOPIS before. My team – Heavy Bulky + Services – had an initiative to onboard thousands of local sellers onto Amazon, coinciding with the opportunity to offer items for pick up. As a designer on the team, I was tasked with finding a solution for implementing BOPIS.
BOPIS overall is a senior executive level goal with multiple teams working on the initiative, so I’ll call my work vs. other teams’ work to distinguish clear ownership.
OBJECTIVES
Design a way for customers to buy an item on Amazon and pick it up in a local business’s store
Conduct user testing to validate designs + learn more about customer needs regarding BOPIS
TIMELINE
March 2021 - Oct 2021
MY ROLE
Product Designer @ Amazon
Competitive Review
Sketches + Brainstorming
Prototyping
UI Design
User Testing
1. EMPATHIZE
To understand the growing need for BOPIS, I reviewed the available Amazon-wide research on changing customer expectations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, customers were buying items online and picking them up in store at least once a month.
COMPETITIVE REVIEW
A quick look at competitors like Home Depot and Best Buy provided evidence that many other retailers already offered a dynamic pickup in store option on their product detail pages based on the customer’s zip code and item availability.
2. DEFINE
Next, I met with stakeholders to discuss the scope of the project. We refined the design task around tech and business constraints, and decided to focus on our complex use cases for heavy bulky items with in-home service offerings. If I could figure out BOPIS for this use case, it could certainly scale to simpler and smaller pickup items as well.
TASK FLOWS
Next I made two different task flows that customers could go through when deciding to choose pickup. Flow idea A has customers making all their crucial decisions on the product detail page, before adding to cart. Flow idea B has customers adding to cart first, and then making decisions not only related to pickup, but could also potentially fully configure the item in other ways, such as selecting delivery options, services, or add-ons.
3. IDEATE
I began the ideation process with sketches, proceeded to wireframes, and then high fidelity designs.
HIGH FIDELITY DESIGNS
I came up with three different treatments for how we could offer in store pickup on product detail pages on Amazon. Since Amazon is a marketplace with different sellers offering the same product, a key constraint that arose was that the pick up offer had to coincide with the specific seller offer and customer zip code.
4. PROTOTYPES
I created a prototypes using Adobe XD to bring each of my treatments to life and allow users to interact with the concepts. The task flow in scope was to choose in store pickup, and change the store location.
5. TEST
Using the prototypes, I designed and launched separate usability tests on UserTesting for each of the three treatments, for a total of 30 participants. The goal was to observe how customers interacted with each concept’s UI, determine if the flows met their expectations, and gain their general thoughts around the concept of BOPIS in case I was missing something important.
USER TESTING
Treatment 2, using the multi-offer display (MOD) was most familiar and easiest to use
Participants were not used to Treatment 1 as an add-on in expanders, and it had less visibility there
Several participants wondered what the standard operating procedure would be for for pickup (i.e. where do I go, what do I show them when I get there, when am I charged, etc.)
Majority of participants requested a map showing pickup options nearby their home
There were a lot of great findings just about the general BOPIS concept, like why participants prefer pickup, when they prefer it, and for what product types, how far would they drive in order to pick up, etc.
Using my user research findings, I was able to gain alignment on a path forward with several other teams across Amazon who were trying to achieve the same goals.
“I missed that option because there was so much stuff going on on the page.”
“What would be helpful is if I could see a map of where the locations are.”
“Extremely helpful, I didn't know I could go to an actual store, I assumed I would have had to go to an Amazon facility.”
6. ITERATE
Based on the findings from user testing, I prioritized Treatment 2 using MOD, iterating and upgrading the designs per customer feedback.
LAUNCH CX
I completed final high fidelity mocks and presented them as part of the multi-team proposal to senior leadership at Amazon. However, a different team, Seller Fulfillment Services, won the bid to implement BOPIS on Amazon. I contributed to that effort on a consult basis from this point forward, but largely handed off my mocks and the day-to-day design to that other team. Their final MVP launch CX is seen on the right.
LAUNCH RESULTS
BOPIS launched on Amazon in October 2021 and hit local selling record orders over Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
AUTO USE CASE
My next task was to take the existing CX for tires with installation services and visualize what the BOPIS experience would be like, given the future idea for the BOPIS program. I combined the two complex experiences into a workable vision for tires + BOPIS (seen in the mocks on the right). I gained the Auto team’s alignment on this as an MVP.
FULL AUTO FLOWS
After gaining alignment on my tires + BOPIS ideas, I then built out the full use cases for tires with installation in the BOPIS flow, thinking about edge cases and unhappy paths as well. This also helped the core BOPIS team start thinking about how to add items with services into their existing flows.
REFLECTION
This was my first experience working on a large project jointly with several teams across Amazon. This helped sharpen my collaboration and communication skills, since I had to work with a lot of moving parts and disparate use cases within the same general umbrella of BOPIS. It was disappointing that my team didn’t win the bid to fully implement BOPIS, but it was a true team effort and in the end what matters is the customer value that was unlocked - they can now buy online and pickup in store, all on Amazon.