Amazon Publisher Services
Simply put, Amazon Publisher services helps websites and applications make money. We provided a monitoring and analytics interface to help our users make sure that they were getting the most out of their ads.
Overview
During my time at Amazon Publisher Services I worked on a small team of two that oversaw the entire experience from end to end. While I owned two of the four platforms that we provided to users, I took on an initiative to reorganize our information architecture in order to help our users get tasks done more efficiently and intuitively.
Key Deliverables
Interaction Flows
Information Architecture
UX Research
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
2019
Project
During an investigation into our own data about retention and completion rates, we found that more than 40% of our users were dropping off at certain parts in the flow. Upon closer inspection, we realized that during the process of building out different platforms for different types of customers, we had failed to make the information architecture consistent. This resulted in four disjointed experiences where one user could go through different flows to complete the same task, causing confusion and resulting in abandonment. This is best exemplified through the multiple navigation menus, despite each platform providing a similar set of tools.
“How could we improve the information architecture to increase familiarity, task completion, and retention?”
Different menus could lead to different task flows, confusing users that used more than one platform.
Research & Analysis
First, we audited our own design to better understand why we had originally designed in this way, and identified where we thought gaps & redundancies existed.
Then, we reached out to our own users and asked them to complete tasks like card sorting to better understand how they grouped items or tasks together and why.
Redefining
Concept
Armed with more data and perspective, we were able to rework the navigation into a modular system that would work across the board.
Now, if you were a company that had both a website and a mobile app, you would see a similar experience for publishing ads on both platforms.
Evaluation
From these initial concepts, we were able to prototype and test, seeing if what we had made actually increased task completion as we predicted.
This undertaking took several months to implement and was only finalized at the end of 2020. So far, the team has seen an increase in task completion and retention, as well as positive anecdotal user feedback. They hope to keep improving the experience at this fundamental level as the number of users grows.