Amazon Smart Home Retail Experience

At Amazon, managing the Hardlines Customer Experience team meant overseeing a broad charter covering roughly 60% of what's sold on Amazon. My focus was on fostering a positive and productive environment.

Connection: Building team cohesion through activities and creating a conducive environment (like hiking trips, using an AirBnb for offsites, and establishing a large open concept workspace called the Writer's Room').
Growth: Challenging my team members to stretch their abilities and reach their full potential.
Experimentation: Encouraging creative exploration through activities like shopping excursions and even remodeling an AirBnB using Amazon products and smart home technology.

Daily Idea Generation (1-a-days)

We implemented a daily 20-minute pencil-and-paper brainstorming session called "1-a-days." The prompts were simple: "How could we improve the Amazon shopping experience?" or "How could we make it more useful and easier to build out a smart home?"

Each session included a 5-minute share-out using a "Yes, and..." approach to build on ideas.
This became a valued meditative break, quickly filling our idea hopper.
It trained us to be more observant outside work, looking for inspiration.
Like a TV writer's room, ideas shared one day might be remixed by someone else later.
Soon, PMs and developers started dropping in.
I established a monthly review of the best ideas with our VP.

Alexa Smart Home: Initial Challenge

The first major project involved a massive strategic ask connecting several organizations: a land grab to get Alexa into as many homes as possible.

This came with a huge, ambiguous request directly from Jeff Bezos—at one point suggesting, "maybe it's not even a detail page…" This gave us the license to disrupt everything, but posed a challenge as key leaders from search and detail page teams weren't initially involved.

Cross-Team Collaboration

Recognizing the need for broad alignment, I scheduled an all-day summit involving peers from search, detail page, the home page, and the various Alexa teams.

The goal was to develop ideas collaboratively and secure buy-in from the outset.
We generated initial high-level concepts together and established a weekly sync.
We leveraged the core shopping team's open labs, signing up my team for weekly tests of early design iterations, which served as a helpful forcing function.

PRFAQ and User Research

Amazon's currency for new ideas is the PRFAQ (Press Release / Frequently Asked Questions document). While typically written by PMs, I requested to help write the narrative.

I brainstormed input with designers and researchers, plus PM and Dev partners, during our 1-a-day sessions.
Our researchers partnered with the Alexa team, driving 43 in-depth interviews targeting users beyond early adopters.
A key insight emerged: experiencing a "magical moment" with Alexa at a friend's or family's home was the most effective trigger for adoption.

Understanding User Behavior

I challenged the designers and researchers: how could we better understand how to address the challenges preventing wider adoption?

Researchers proposed an observational study, viewing naturally occurring interactions at pop-up displays and the Amazon bookstore.
A significant finding: Almost no one used voice commands in these public settings due to social awkwardness.
Recalling Jeff Bezos' challenge to think differently, I encouraged the team to consider what big learnings we could take from this.

The AirBnB Showroom Pivot

The idea of experiencing smart home tech in a physical space remained intriguing.

Then our 1-a-days produced this idea: let AirBnB hosts provide the showrooms.
The team got excited, and brainstormed how we could prove the concept.
First we decided to try to test the idea with a single host.

Engaging AirBnB Hosts

We realized that scaling this idea required incentivizing AirBnB hosts to stock their properties with smart home devices.

A researcher suggested attending a local AirBnB meetup.
We learned hosts could significantly increase revenue with a property makeover.
We identified an underperforming unit in West Seattle and pitched our makeover concept, complete with an Augmented Reality demo, to our VP.

Proof of Concept: The Makeover

We convinced our somewhat risk-averse VP to provide $8,000 for the POC.

The team and I spent three intensive days assembling furniture and redecorating the unit (my task involved painting a wall white!).
Within one month, the host's listing ranked #1 out of 49 comparable listings in the area.
Booking revenue increased by 268%.
We recorded nearly 200 unique voice utterances from guests interacting with the smart home devices over 38 days.

Presenting Findings and Next Steps

We presented our findings to leadership. Our VP was highly collaborative and agreed to pursue the part of the concept within our organization's core competency.

The remaining ideas related to host engagement and management were handed off to the dedicated Alexa hospitality team. I believe our initial thinking and efforts helped inform their subsequent work.

Driving Sales: AirBnB Host Packages

Focusing on the experience within our purview, we introduced curated AirBnB Host packages on Amazon.

This initiative successfully drove the occurrence of organic search terms like "AirBnB host essentials" and "AirBnB smart home packages."
It also directly drove sales of relevant supplies and home furnishings.
Overall, I consider this outcome a significant win.

Interactive Virtual Scenes

What if we could achieve an element of that magical discovery moment within the digital shopping space? Could simple, interactive scenarios work?

Recalling Jeff Bezos' challenge to invent something potentially beyond the detail page, we felt it was time to return and present our pitch. At the meeting, we followed the standard practice of reading the PRFAQ silently, then I presented the design vision and demonstrated the interactive experience.

Successful Pitch and Impact

Alexa, turn on christmas tree

We received the green light. Jeff B simply said, "Good job," and thanked the team. My VP's VP later mentioned how rare direct positive feedback from Jeff was. It was a proud moment for the team.

Here's an example scene we developed. Many people could relate to the scenario, and I like to think we saved a lot of potential back strain! This specific scene ended up selling a significant number of smart plugs.

Sales Lift and Detail Page Integration

The interactive scenes demonstrably increased sales across various smart home categories.

Based on this success, we added these inline discovery patterns as a standard component available within the detail page framework for other teams to use.

Experimenting in Search Results

We also experimented with incorporating these interactive elements directly into search results.

We found that placing the interactive module inline, after the second or third organic result, converted better than using the 'hero' slot (typically reserved for high-paying advertisers).
We contributed this inline pattern to the search results 'tapestry' framework.

Addressing Compatibility Complexity

Once customers were convinced of the magic of smart home, they often faced a confusing landscape of compatibility standards: Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Matter, etc.

Purchasing certain devices without understanding the ecosystem could easily lead to frustration and dead ends, effectively painting the customer into a corner.

Solution: DIY Smart Home Recipes

One of the developers who regularly attended our 1-a-day sessions proposed an idea: create "recipes" for the DIY smart home enthusiast, similar to Instructables or WikiHow.

We started by creating simple, step-by-step recipe instructions focused on achieving a desired outcome (e.g., "Control my lamp with voice").
These recipes often clarified the need for specific hubs or bridges, which were common requirements at the time.
This approach worked particularly well for customers new to both smart home technology and Alexa.

Optimizing for Existing Alexa Owners

We also wanted to optimize the experience for customers who already owned an Alexa device but were new to expanding into smart home capabilities.

We leveraged the "cocktail party effect" by personalizing recommendations based on device ownership (e.g., displaying "Works with Emily's Echo Show").
Getting clearance to use this level of ownership data required significant internal advocacy.
The results showed a significant lift in sales for Works With Alexa (WWA) certified products and a corresponding reduction in customer service concessions (returns/refunds).

Works With Alexa (WWA) Branding Challenge

Once we had established the value of WWA certification and addressed key customer goals, the next challenge was making the WWA brand easily identifiable amidst the noise of product listings.

However, a competing "Amazon Certified" program existed within a sister organization. This created conflict, blocking us from easily integrating a WWA badge into search results because we had similar use cases but different badge programs, and implementing badges wasn't a high priority for the search team at that time.

Resolving Branding Conflict

Recalling Jeff Bezos' principle, "When disagreements block you, don't waste time and escalate to break the roadblock," I initiated steps to resolve the conflict.

First, I partnered directly with the graphic designer from the competing "Certified" team, cycling through dozens of potential logos and text strings, eventually narrowing down a consideration set.
We then scheduled a review with leadership from both sides to present a unified proposal.
It involved significant negotiation, particularly with the Alexa device team to ensure brand consistency across digital and physical packaging, but we successfully agreed on a unified brand identity.
Despite the unified branding, the search team initially pushed back on implementing a visual badge, opting to start with a text-based label due to platform retooling efforts. The designer involved was understandably discouraged.
We pivoted and tested the visual badge concept in the core shopping team's open labs and won the A/B test (weblab), and the visual certified badging was introduced to the search framework.
I'm happy to say the WWA visual badge is still used today, while the other competing certification programs eventually disappeared.

Leveraging our Learnings on the Home Page

The Amazon home page represents a massive opportunity for product discovery.

We developed "Solution Cards" – specialized placements featuring time-sensitive interactive virtual scenes (like decorating a Christmas tree around the holidays) combined with compatibility information. The cards drove device and 3rd party product sales by +10%.

We contributed the Solution Card concept as a new reusable "gateway" pattern to the central pattern library.

This allowed other teams, such as the Fire TV group, to adopt and leverage this interactive discovery mechanism for their own products and features.

Key Learnings

Collaboration is Crucial: Engaging peers and stakeholders early and often, especially across organizational boundaries, is essential for tackling large, ambiguous problems.
Don't Get Precious About Ideas: Be willing to adapt, remix, or even abandon ideas based on feedback, data, or changing circumstances. The AirBnB pivot is a prime example.
Work Around Roadblocks: When faced with obstacles (technical, organizational, or political), find creative ways to pivot, escalate appropriately, or lend resources to overcome them.
System-Level Thinking: Look for opportunities where individual features or improvements can sum up to create significant system-level impact (e.g., contributing reusable patterns, unifying branding).

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