Amazon: Product Bundles

Outcome

Design explorations for bundles were more ambitious than what eventually launched. Product rightfully waited to solve some backend technical issues with creating bundles, and ultimately decided to launch just the item list in the hero product display. Competitive pricing rules also prevented us from displaying our discounting formulas, so the rolled up price was all that was allowed. The abbreviated and simpler bundles was launched and testing confirmed it was good enough. Scaling back on robust component details may have been a case of considering better of showing too much information that a potential customer would be put off from a purchase. What launched was a scaled-back version of my final designs, but an improved user experience that Amazon offered to third-party sellers, who could better control their own inventory and offer discounts on Amazon’s seller platform.

Goals

My design challenge on this project was to clearly communicate the bundle offer advantages (price, convenience, authority of interoperable items), include component information, and design the end to end shopping experience from search results to checkout. We came up with clear product tenets to guide us away from compromise.
Project Tenets 

1. Bundles give the customer a discount and/or convenient grouping of items they might already buy together 

2. Bundles will clearly communicate their price and editorial advantage over buying individual items

3. Customer will be able to buy the bundle immediately

4. Seller of the bundle will be clearly identifiable

5. Bundles will be clearly differentiated via imagery and item title in search results and on their detail pages

6.  Bundles will have meaningful item names (eg: “Canon Beginners DSLR Bundle”)

7. Bundles will be easy to find via search and browse

8. The customer will have a clear understanding of how and when their bundle items will ship, optimally as close together as possible 

The bundle will display as the sum of its parts, and not display broken out into separate items, except on the Checkout, Your Account, Order and Shipment Confirmation emails where componants of the bundle will be clearly broken out.

Approach

We first needed to learn what customers though of bundles. Working with the project’s user researcher, I quickly prototyped ideas for showing a bundle and its components. We found out from shoppers that their main concerns were the quality and pricing of individual items in the bundle. They wanted to be sure Amazon wasn’t trying to offload cheap remainder products with other higher quality “hero” products. They also wanted to know the specific discounts on items in the bundle.

A new kind of detail page

Bundles required the design of a new type of detail page. Amazon shoppers used to single physical products for sale on the site would now see several items grouped together. We worried, would they understand that this is a virtual product, and that items may not arrive together in a tidy bundled package? Could we clearly communicate that our fulfillment systems would deliver items separately, but still as parts of a whole “parent item”? Many moving parts and anticipated user questions informed what we included on the detail page. At the time, Amazon erred on the side of displaying all possible information users might want, so the team opted to provide for robust coverage of bundle pricing and item specifications.

Considerations for detail page

1. Create a clear bundle buying page where all or most components are visible above the fold

2. Find an acceptable image treatment for the bundle main image; one that scales and maintains image integrity and remains legible even if scaled down (such as on search)

3.  Create a display widget for the bundle that is distinct enough from a single asin to be clear at a glance

4. Create a bundle component widget that can be used across product lines with minimal customizing

Questions users will have at the detail page

• What is the advantage of buying a bundle over buying an item individually?

• What’s in the bundle?

• Ratings for the bundle versus items in it

Finding and ordering

So, we can create a bundle, but will customers find it? Establishing a scalable model for merchandising it from a search result was my next challenge. I gave Search results a new fly out functionality, so that a customer could evaluate among other product options within search.

Single page checkout

Checkout and purchase path was the last step in the bundle shopping experience. A complex (and impermanent) formulation of availability, fulfillment, and in-stock status algorithms calculated the display of the items and their delivery options. The goal here was to convey a familiar checkout display to the customer, while reminding them that items wouldn’t necessarily all come in one box.

The seamless display of a bundle required consideration of many checkout status scenarios:

• Prime v. Non-Prime

• Shipping restrictions

• Multi-item orders (items besides the bundle)

• Gift restrictions

• Placement with other possible checkout promotions