The case for an edge case — an Amazon Seller UX case study
I wrote this article in April 2020. This story is for educational purposes. The design of Sellers Central represented in the visuals provided here may have been updated by Amazon and might not apply with the examples below.
Often in product design, we overlook data when it is not in a numerical format, pushing back on design solutions that seem at first, edge cases. When we use only data in a numerical format we are likely to:
- Ignore contextual edge cases that are indeed possible scenarios
- Fail testing solutions against real-world scenarios
- Fail including user advocates
- Dismiss qualitative data with a significant impact on the product
One thing I have wanted to explore recently was to become an Amazon seller for my small business, so what did I do? What most people would do, I went to Amazon’s landing page and searched for “Sell on Amazon”. Quickly the link on the footer of the page took me to their Seller’s on-boarding page, where most of the questions I had were answered through a progress indicator that breaks the process into the logical steps I needed to take to become a seller.
I have been an avid user of Amazon for a long time. Walking through this on-boarding experience was delightful, detailed and to the point. I felt nothing but encouraged through the process to start my business journey. Excited and ready to continue, I wanted to create a Seller account.
Let’s create a scenario to continue our journey:
- Scenario: Leo is a seller who started a small business and he is now venturing into selling his products on Amazon.
- User story: As a seller, Leo wants to register for an Amazon account so he can sell his products online.
- Use case: Register and complete the form for an amazon seller account.
To continue our journey, let’s see how these scenarios and stories as described unfold in Leo’s journey.
It was great that I didn’t have to create a different account being an Amazon customer already, all I had to do was to Sign in with my existing credentials and follow what it seems a five-step registration process.
So far so good, but here is where the journey broke up. Sometimes we treat scenarios, user stories, and use cases interchangeably, with a scenario written like our example above, we miss important details of our users.
The very first step of this registration form is to enter individual information such as Country of citizenship and country of birth. As I attempted to fill in the details for our user, Leo, I noticed his country of birth is not on the list even though he is a resident and a citizen of a country different from where he was born. For Leo’s case, let’s assume his country of birth is Peru but he is an Australian citizen.
As I tried to find out how to proceed I also started wondering if I was filling the form right. Amazon has a list of countries accepted for Seller registration. I found this note on another page.
“Note: To be eligible to sell on Amazon, you need to be resident in one of the following countries, have a valid phone number and have an internationally chargeable credit card”.
Then a list of eligible countries appears, it does not list Leo’s country of birth, and nothing should prevent a seller if they are a resident of one of the eligible countries. However, I could not continue as I wasn’t able to select the country of birth, which is a mandatory field.
While this is not an entire design problem, it’s likely related to ignoring the contextual situation of Leo, our user in the scenario above. We could have approached a richer story and use contextual data for Leo’s story:
- Scenario: Leo is a Peruvian born that immigrated to Australia 10 years ago, after several years living in Melbourne he became an Australian citizen. He started a small business and is venturing into selling his products on Amazon.
- User Story: Leo, a resident from an eligible country, wants to register for an Amazon seller account so he can sell his products online.
- Use Case: Register for an amazon seller account. Preconditions: The seller needs to be a resident in one of the listed countries regardless of his country of birth.
I could have continued the journey for Leo, but the form never asks for a country of residency and it completely ignores that people can be born in countries different from where they are a resident and hold dual citizenships. This could have been caught by asking: Can a seller born in a non-eligible country complete the task?
No matter how much we think we know about our users, it’s likely that we don’t. A badly fed drop-down on a form can push your customers away the moment they were ready to go. Often qualitative data is ignored, leaving the context out of the experience.
As a side note, according to statistics, there were above 500,000 people immigrating to Australia in 2019. And about 20,000 Amazon sellers based in Australia. While the example above depicted a seller based in Australia, it also applies to potential immigrant users living in other countries such as Canada, and the US.
How many new more sellers could there be if that drop-down didn’t prevent them from signing up?
