Amazon is one of the largest eCommerce platforms and companies in the world. And while Jeff Bezos majored in computer science, he didn’t design or even develop Amazon’s website. Instead, there’s a large team of marketers, web developers and software engineers behind Amazon’s billion-dollar website.
Since Amazon is making billions of dollars every year, surely there must be something to learn from their web design! Today, we’ll go into more detail about Amazon’s eCommerce web designing process and what we can learn and apply to our own stores.
Their navigation menu
One key part of Amazon’s eCommerce web design is its navigation menu. At the top left, Amazon only has six entries – “All”, “Today’s Deals”, “Customer Service”, “Registry”. “Gift Cards” and “Sell”. When you click on the “All” button, you see a pop-up on your left and all the different shopping categories that you can shop in. This is really useful because Amazon is first checking whether you’re looking to buy something, enquire about an existing order, or to sell something.
Amazon doesn’t make the assumption that you want to buy something and doesn’t make you fish around for the “Sell” button which many eCommerce platforms leave at the bottom of its website in the footer. This tells you a lot about Amazon’s focus and that they understand that a good eCommerce platform meets a balance between demand, supply and great customer service.
Their AI-backed search bar
Amazon’s search bar is prominently at the top of the page and doesn’t look special. It looks like a regular search bar on any WordPress website. But there’s a lot of work behind it and a lot of backend development into Amazon’s search algorithm. Amazon has to make sure that it shows customers exactly what they search for. It needs to account for brand names, spelling errors and has to show you results in a split second.
This is out of the scope for a web developer, and backend software engineers spend thousands of hours with Python and C++ to develop machine learning programs for a task that seems as simple as search.
For example, say that you type in the word “Car”. Amazon shows you everything car related – remote controlled cars, a backpack car, toys about the movie “Cars” and baby car seats. Amazon will show logged in users something different. A parent who’s previously purchased diapers and milk powder may only see baby car seats since Amazon can make an educated guess that you’re probably a parent looking for something car-related for your child.
A website like Amazon may seem simple on the surface with its simple colours and basic layout. But there’s a lot underneath the surface and a lot of work done to make your shopping experience as smooth as possible.
