Improve Amazon’s Home and Lighting category page - Product Design Interview Question.
Today I am breaking down an answer to the product design interview question “Improve Amazon’s Home and Lighting category page.” It has some issues, see if you can spot them. At the end I provide a take on what should be improved.
Question prompt sourced from “PM Interview Questions” by Lewis C. Lin.
Prompt: Assume you are on the Home and Lighting team for the USA market, how would you go about improving our category page?
Step 1 — Context
CANDIDATE: I want to make sure I’m on the same page with you. You are talking about the main page for the category “Home and Lighting” for US users on Amazon’s Desktop, Mobile Web, and iOS & Android clients. The people who visit this page are ordinary Amazon users from different walks of life looking to find the best deal on the internet for the items they are looking for. They use the category page to begin their search for items they want to buy.
Step 2 — Personas
CANDIDATE: Great, let’s start by breaking up the user base into multiple personas. I can imagine the following groups to frequent the category page:
Homeowners: age 30–45; first time homeowners; low-mid budget range; busy professional; time sensitive; multitasking. Purpose — want to find best-value quality items at the cheapest price point; want a one stop-shop for all their home & lighting needs as they are busy professionals with no time to shop around. Picking out lights and other items probably feels like a chore technology should solve for them.
Contractors: age 25–40; price insensitive; busy on multiple projects — too many details to keep in mind. Have incentive to either a) purchase the most convenient option, even if it’s more expensive — they aren’t paying. b) purchase from a merchant they receive commission from — personal financial gain.
Interior designers: age 30–50; work within client budgets, busy on multiple projects — too many details to keep in mind. Have incentive to work with merchants who pay they commission per customer.
From the three, I’d recommend focusing on the first time home owners as they probably make up the majority of the users visiting the category page.
Step 3 — User needs
CANDIDATE: I briefly mentioned some key needs of first-time home owners, let me outline a few in more detail:
As the first time home owner I want a one stop shop for all my home & lightning needs so I can quickly buy validated things for my house. I don’t have time to research and validate many options myself. I want to rely on social proof and research of others to get recommendations on what I should buy.
As the first time home owner I want to get the best price, yet not spend excessive time searching for it. The majority of my budget has been spent on the downpayment, but I don’t want to sacrifice quality of my lighting, etc.
As the first time home owner I want to make sure I install what I purchase a) correctly b) without devoting too much time to figuring out how to do it, because I’m short on time and don’t have the budget to make a mistake and have to purchase the item again.
Step 4 — Prioritize user needs
CANDIDATE: To prioritize what to tackle first I choose and estimate the key parameters that affect the decision. For this problem I chose revenue impact and effort as the two key parameters. In the future we could also factor in impact on customer satisfaction.
The winner among the three needs for first-time homeowners is the need to afford quality items. Let’s see what we can do about it.
Step 5 — Brainstorm solutions
CANDIDATE: There are multiple ways to make something more affordable, one of the most straightforward ones is to sell it at a discount. But often times it is neither feasible nor economically rational. Lets brainstorm alternative ways to make items more affordable.
Idea 1: Advertise the option to pay in installments on the “Home and Lighting” category page. Since the category page is where the majority of the users land, advertising this new financial instrument should increase sales among users who can’t afford the item at a lump sum.
Idea 2: Advertise “group” buying on the “Home and Lighting” category page, whereby when enough people commit to purchasing by a certain deadline, the item is sold at a reduced price to each person. Users can offer such deals to sellers on Amazon as a reversal to when the seller needs to figure out the threshold for the minimal number of people and the discounted price.
Idea 3: Often the decision to purchase is the result of many potential purchases competing for the same budget. Highlight on the “Home and Lighting” category page the scarcity of the recommended items or groups of items. For example if there’s a world shortage of microchips, highlight the scarcity of home appliances that use them.
Step 6 — Evaluate trade-offs
CANDIDATE: To evaluate tradeoffs between potential solutions I usually define a few relevant criteria within the context of the problem. Here I think it’s important to consider: honesty, revenue potential, and ease of implementation.
Since we are dealing with financial instruments it is paramount to consider how honest the users will perceive them to be in the context of other platforms they user and market norms in general.
Installments need to be communicated as tools devoid of hidden fees and other “gotcha” fine print moments. The customer needs to know exactly how installments are scheduled and paid out, and what the consequences are for failure to pay.
Group buying is relatively straightforward, it’s just a simple abstraction over the checkout process which is delayed in time. It is important to communicate clearly that the purchase will not happen if the minimal number of customers isn’t met. Failure to do so will generate disgruntled customers and negatively affect brand perception.
Scarcity highlights can be perceived to be the most dishonest as it is easily faked. Additionally people can leave the platform agitated having negative thoughts, because they either couldn’t afford the increase in price or they could, but overpaid for what was once cheaper.
Step 7 — Make a recommendation
CANDIDATE: To summarize I recommend that we improve the “Home & Lighting” category page by introducing the ability to pay with installments, which should solve a critical problem of affording more quality items for our core audience — first time home owners — and be useful to other user segments who can benefit from splitting up the price into more manageable chunks.
Although there are substantial risks in a) execution (e.g debt collection is not our expertise) b) brand perception if this financial instrument is deemed dishonest, the business will benefit, because we will have introduced a new revenue stream which if successful can be easily scaled to other categories.
Reviewing the answer
Few things people suggested to pay attention to:
In the “Context” step, clarify what the goal for the improvement is. Is it to drive revenue or improve customer experience? Ideally attach a metric to the goal and center the conversation around it. By doing so you are starting with a goal that can be measured (success metric) and when you end your discussion, you can circle back and point out that your proposed solution drives this success metric the best.
Think a bit deeper when defining personas and imagine how their CJM differs from the average one. Things like buying in bulk and getting alternative offers when you go over budget seem very logical and intuitive.
I thought I could shortcut on prioritizing which customer segment to focus on, by assuming and stating that they are the majority. But this stands out as shallow. Think of a few criteria and use them to prioritize which customer segment to choose from. Examples: which customer segment aligns best with company’s strategic vision; which customer segment generates the most revenue; which customer segment is growing very rapidly across the market. Perhaps I’m missing some key ones here, would love to hear from you!
Validating your solutions is an important sub-step of evaluating tradeoffs. Best done by demonstrating a good grasp on some real world numbers + conversions and being able to apply them to the specific case you are working on.