The Amazon Denim Shop (launched Nov 2009) serves as the base model for a completely redesigned customer experience that is tailored to clothing, shoes, and other fashion categories. In the attempt to become the premiere destination for "softlines" products worldwide, we had to understand the unique characteristics and challenges of shopping for clothing online. For example, it is critical to get the customer to the right subset of products, even if it adds a click. Not addressing this risks overwhelming the customer with too much selection and/or alienating the customer early in the process by showing brands and selection that would not be in their consideration set. Once the customer is in the right subset of selection for them, shopping for clothing is about viewing many items in order to narrow down to the exactly right one. The ability to scan, browse, and keep track of many relevant items with ease is important. Rich and engaging imagery is key through all aspects of the experience; imagery and beauty is at the forefront of these purchase decisions. Beyond targeted shopping, clothing shopping is often a recreational, undirected activity, therefore we wanted to make shopping more fluid, fun, and effortless. One core idea that I put forth is that we engage in a helpful-human conversation with the customer in order to help determine their intent, and we prioritize this conversation over raw search results. Jeff Bezos referred to this idea as revolutionary. Additional key innovations in the Denim Shop Customer Experience:
Quicklist (enabling gathering behavior typical of softlines shopping) & Quickview
Contextual Navigator (display a contextual set of results on detail pages)
Hybrid Search/Browse page (combine the best of a browse page with the power of a search page)
New refinements, larger images, reduced noise.