VIDEO SEARCH RESULTS

Encourage customers to continue their research with additional video content.

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

Amazon Search now features high-quality videos of product demos, reviews, recommendations, and buying guides, powered by brands, customers, influencers, and third party publishers like CNet.

why?

  • Over 50% of internet users looked for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store” (ThinkWithGoogle).
  • Online shoppers who view product videos are 1.81x more likely to make a purchase than non-viewers.
  • “Some 86% of internet users polled were swayed by video to purchase a product. Text proved to have about half the power of video, with only 44% of respondents inspired to purchase a product after reading” (eMarketer).
  • “Compared with other formats, video was almost twice as effective at driving sales across categories including electronics, fashion, food/beverage, health and beauty, and travel, and especially at retailers Amazon and Walmart, according to the study” (eMarketer).

Customers want a immersive, realistic and, effortless product preview experience on search.

HYPOTHESIS

  • Providing a realistic product preview experience utilizing videos along with an effortless browse experience will help customers evaluate products effortlessly.
  • Incentivizing our customers and making it easy for them to create videos will give Amazon access to more high-quality content.
  • Surfacing trustworthy and rich informational content will help customers make more informed and confident purchase decisions.

UNDERSTANDING THE USER

Who

Picuture that represents the Persona Rosa Klebb.

Proto Persona

Rosa Klebb

“Why do I need the 4K? What is coming out next? What makes this better than the previous? What is best for movies and tv vs gaming?”

Rosa is overwhelmed by too many options. She finds it hard to compare and narrow down products. She has difficulty in understanding key product attributes, their relative importance and how they map onto her needs.


How can we help customers learn more about products without having to transit back-and-forth between search results and product detail pages?

Search + Product detail UX. Customer search for an item and she needs to click on the product to be able to see what videos are available on the product detail page for reference.

Goal

  • Make the discovery process for videos simpler and fast.
  • Present the option of watching a video without intrusion.

What?

video card

The Video Card will be used to surface buying guides, recommendations, how-to, product demos, unboxing, and product reviews.

Utilizing the Video Card to display recommendations from authoritative sources along with Reasons to buy will help customers make confident and informed purchase decisions.

Search pages layouts

There are two types of views that users can use when displaying results on a page. Grid view and List view. Both have different real state to share for the addition of videos.

Grid vs List views.

Grid view experiments

How to show ONE video result on the Grid view.

Title, duration, video provider and, of course, a very descriptive screenshot of the content of the video help users to have a clear idea of what to expect after selecting the video.

Due to the extra space that the video card shows within the grid, I suggested adding some video description like in the concepts 1 and 2.

Round 1 of concepts
Round 2 of concepts

HTML/CSS Hi-Fi

for Grid view

The HTML prototype exposed usability issues straight away and avoided natural omissions that are often made when wireframing.

Adding video metadata to the Grid.
Video filling card.
Metadata at the top of the card.

List view experiments

How to show ONE video result on the LIST view.

Title, duration, video provider and, of course, a very descriptive screenshot of the content of the video help users to have a clear idea of what to expect after selecting the video.

The above concept shows the location of the video metadata under the video thumbnail. I thought to keep consisted the video layout.

The above concept shows the location of the video metadata right to the video thumbnail. As a result, the extra space seems more "filled" with the metadata next to the video.


The Carousel

More than 1 video on the List view

The user needs to browse through a set of items and possibly select one of them. Also, they enable more than one piece of content to occupy the same piece of prime real estate on the search result page, which can help diffuse any infighting about whose content is most deserving.

In addition, limiting to four, or five video cards help with discovering the content and finding the content in the carousel again later.


Iterations - Video Card

One of my biggest UX concerns consisted of the non-so appealing video card experience in contrast to other platforms.

For example, the small text and lack of enough metadata to describe the video content

Lo-Fi -Concepts

Concepts that I run with my PM to start rolling the ball with the stakeholders.

Hi-Fi -Concepts

Thinking big.


prototype

The HTML prototype exposed usability issues straight away and avoided natural omissions that are often made when wireframing. The process, as a whole, was becoming less time consuming because small changes weren't taking hours to rectify and the code was completely re-usable when it came to the production stage.

Evaluate

I tested the new UI with five participants, looking for usability problems. We also talked to participants about what they would use video results for, looking for what kind of functionality is needed to solve the users’ real problems.

Final experience

List View

Launched experience in January 2018 for the Search Results on the List view.

Detail view of the carousel.
Launched experience for List View 2018

Grid View

Launched experience in January 2018 for the Search Results on the List view.

Launched experience for Grid View 2018

Positive results and much more to do

The video addition in the search results and the new lightbox experience has had a positive impact on the search experience. The viewing rate has been significantly increased which means customers are starting to watch videos related to products while searching.

The completion of this project helped me understand and learn more about how to work with other organizations within the company.