Brand Shopping Growth

Today, online shopping overly focuses on the utility of buying, while sacrificing the more fun aspects of serendipitous discovery and intrigue that brands can evoke.

In an effort to create an experience driving consideration for brands, Amazon curated organic brand building products: Stores, Posts, Live and Follow. The focus on these has led to an efficient experience, however, it has come at the cost of flattening out any brand differentiation on the site. This approach sidelines brands; modern shoppers, who consider brands they buy to be an extension of their identity, find themselves switching between Instagram, brand websites and other resources to discover and learn more about the brands.

The destination driven approach of many programs has led to disruption in the shopping pattern rather than incorporation of these destinations in shopping patterns.

Unification of Products

By favoring a strategy of “meeting shoppers where they are” and consolidating brand content into a single destination accessible through ingress points throughout the traditional shopping journey, we will be able to provide a contiguous brand marketing experience.

As a designer for Stores (a brand building product) I worked with others to create a foundation; our 3 focus areas being–

1) creating a seamless brand shopping experience which allows shoppers to discover and evaluate a brand

2) building a connected set of capabilities that allow brands to tell their story effectively on Amazon

3) delivering a portfolio of metrics that help advertisers track and measure success on discovery and consideration.

Project Details

This unification vision kickstarted in October 2020. It is constantly evolving and a part of each product feature launch as we progress toward full unification.

Role: Amazon Stores Designer

To comply with my NDA, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this project is my own and does not necessarily reflect the views of Amazon.

What shopper problem are we aiming to solve?

For shoppers, brands are an important attribute that influences purchase decisions. Discovery of a new brand may trigger excitement and intrigue, making shopping fun, while the history, quality and positioning of the brand appeal to the values that shoppers hold dear and engenders trust which helps with purchase decisions.

For the important role they play in shopping, brands are surprisingly muted on Amazon. By unifying CX across these products and bringing these experiences to mainstream shopping journeys we are: making it seamless for shoppers to discover brands they love, use brand’s attributes to drive informed purchase decisions and allow shoppers to build long-term preferences. 

What advertiser problem are we aiming to solve?

Today, advertisers lack an end to end product solution from Amazon Advertising to drive their branding goals on Amazon. The approach to brand marketing on Amazon is fragmented across multiple products tucked away in their own portals with no common success metric that tie the outputs.

Our goal is to help brands to fulfill their brand objectives on Amazon by 1) making it easier to coordinate content creation across organic brand advertising products, 2) consolidating mid-funnel metrics across products and presenting it in an easy to use brand dashboard, and 3) delivering a quantification for value generated by a shopper engaging with branded content on Amazon.

Brand Home– Stores will grow to play a role of unified “brand home” on Amazon

As part of this evolution, brand feeds will become a page inside Stores. Brands will have a choice of adding a Posts widget on Stores homepage. Similarly, brands participating in Amazon Live will have a choice of adding a Live stream widget to Stores homepage.

Brand Preview– Tapping on the brand header on a product detail page will open a brand preview card

This brand preview card will show follower count, a preview of content, an introduction to brand’s attributes and “about” information, along with featured products from the brand–providing enough context about the brand, without taking the shopper out of the mainstream shopping journey, to help establish authenticity and reaffirm the brand value, which should help with purchase decisions. For a further deep dive into the brand, the preview card will offer links to Store.

Virtual Store Window– Posts, Stores content + navigation will formulate a window display of a physical store

This CX will be available to shoppers without having to tap on the brand header. It will help shoppers confirm the authenticity and reaffirm the brand value, which should help with purchase decisions. At the same time, this CX will act as an ingress to Stores