Buy with Prime Shopper Experience Guidelines

Introduction

These Buy with Prime Shopper Experience Guidelines are created for anyone who is designing or implementing a shopper experience for Buy with Prime.

Why do we need guidelines?

Guidelines help remove the guesswork on what it takes to deliver a great experience for Prime members. They help us work faster, make more informed decisions, and give Prime members a consistent experience they know and love.

Buy with Prime principles

1. Only apply to products that are eligible for Buy with Prime. Buy with Prime is only an option in cases where we're offering Prime shopping benefits to Prime members.
2. Be recognizable to Prime members. Prime members expect Buy with Prime to look and act the same wherever they interact with the service, and we uphold this with visuals, brand voice, and experience parity. We don’t allow customizations by outside parties to Prime or Buy with Prime brand elements (logo, badge, button color, delivery promise copy)—these are owned and controlled by Amazon.
3. Meet the Buy with Prime experience bar. Prime members expect fast delivery, a straightforward checkout, easy returns, and support if something goes wrong with their order. The Buy with Prime experience bar is more than look and feel—it means living up to the expectations of Buy with Prime no matter where it’s offered.
4. Give shoppers confidence to try something new. We educate shoppers who are new to Buy with Prime through help links and FAQ pages that explain how Buy with Prime works so that shoppers understand the value of it.
5. Be accessible. Hold a high customer bar for designing accessible and inclusive experiences, including going the extra mile to ensure that intuitive and aesthetic designs are also accessible.

Why does shopper experience matter?

Shoppers look for signals on whether they can trust a website before making a purchase, and there are several factors that go into that.

“A poorly designed site makes me feel uncomfortable and makes me think twice about purchasing on their site.” - Prime member

Trust busters include:
a) how messy and disorganized the website is (e.g., not enough white space, unclear navigation and labels, misaligned text and images)
b) the presence of too many ads or ad-like features
c) the absence of readily available customer service options, particularly a phone number
d) questionable, insufficient, or absent product reviews
e) no company address and/or no clear sense of where products are shipped from
f) spelling or grammar mistakes throughout

By taking these factors into consideration and developing a straightforward, clear, and trustworthy experience on your website, you can give shoppers the confidence they need to make a purchase. By considering what shoppers care about most, you can create an experience that delights your customers.

What do shoppers care about?

Amazon conducted 120 hours of interviews where shoppers discussed their end-to-end shopping journey and detailed the most prioritized outcomes required of a shopping experience on independent websites — including how they would assess and measure a successful outcome. From that study, we found that shoppers want to:

1. Learn about the product from people like them
2. Know they are getting a good deal
3. Track their purchased item’s progress
4. Know a product is as good as it is described
5. Understand their return and purchase coverage options
6. Support businesses that match their personal values
7. Make it convenient to buy and receive their product
8. Learn more about a brand
9. Control what information they share
10. Ensure the company is legitimate

Consider how the experience you’re offering supports these shopper goals. These guidelines outline how Buy with Prime can address some of these top considerations for shoppers.

Shopper journey

When creating Buy with Prime experiences for shoppers, consider the end-to-end shopping journey.

1. Obtain lay of the land & deeper dive: Help shoppers discover that this website offers Buy with Prime and indicate which items are available for Prime shopping benefits.
2. Compare: Help shoppers understand how Buy with Prime compares to other purchase options on your website.
3. Purchase: Make it easy for shoppers to move forward with their purchase by using saved defaults from their Amazon account.
4. Post-purchase: Make it clear to shoppers where their package is and and make it easy to manage orders.