Lessons from @Amazon (A Work-Related Post)

I'm a big fan of Amazon. I try to do most of my shopping there. It's usually quick, easy, competitively priced. When I do a book review, I link to my Amazon Affiliate account. (Not that any of you ever click on it.) So I end up writing about Amazon a lot. Not because I mean to be critical, because they offer so many examples of what to do and not to do.

So here's two recent things we can learn from.

#1: An email subscription oops.

I recently somehow got subscribed to Amazon.com.br's email list and that was a pain because I don't speak Portuguese so it was complicated trying to figure out how to unsubscribe without unsubscribing from all Amazon emails.


Lesson: How's your email program? Are you regularly auditing? Are you making it easy to understand what a subscriber is subscribed to? Do you offer enough granularity in order for people to stop specific mailings without unsubscribing from everything?



#2: A user-interface oops. Check it:

So I got an email after a recent package and they asked me to rate how the packaging was. A book dropped into a box and then a product in its own box dropped into the box, wrapped up and sent. The book cover got a little bent, but nothing I couldn't solve by putting it under something heavy for a few days before wrapping it.

So when I got this, I thought, sure, I'll rate it.  I clicked through, saw this page, except under the blue line was my order.  I clicked on the order, the area under the blue line changed to a form, I filled it out, clicked submit and then the page changed again, with the area under the blue bar saying "We're Sorry."  

Now.. I'm 98% sure my feedback was submitted and that the page just refreshed to look for more packages to review and then didn't find any.  It might have been nice to have a screen in there that said "Thank you."

Lesson: As you change and modify your programs, are you regularly reviewing with a critical eye to see if a change has negatively impacted the User Experience in a way you didn't anticipate?