With Amazon Inc’s market value close to a trillion, Jeff Bezos the richest man on this planet and most importantly Amazon being a Tech company, I fail to understand why can’t invest money in building proper user-friendly Native apps? As Souq.com app was recently replaced by Amazon’s, and I being a frequent shopper of tech and gadgets online, I got a good chance to play with Amazon.com‘s apps. If I was to describe my overall experience of using Amazon’s apps in a single word, I would say “disappointing”. With Amazon.com being the leader in e-commerce and capturing over 49% of every e-commerce dollar spent in a mature market like the US, I fail to understand why their app is so poorly designed and developed. Not only does their app lack the luster and finish of a mature e-commerce product, but their app is also both weak technically and from UI/UX point of view.
So what can be improved with the app?
- UI/UX needs an overall overhaul. Souq.com(their predecessor in the UAE market), used to high-light offers clearly. Simple things like before and after price hi-lighting need to be clear and concise and that is clearly lacking at the moment. Sorry Amazon, what might work in one market doesn’t work in another. Think Global but act Local, please.
- The checkout process is cumbersome. I’ve got two shipping addresses saved under my profile. When I try to checkout, I select a delivery address that I would like the product delivered to, but on the next step, it gets reset to the default. This has lead to massive confusion every time I’ve ordered something.
- They’re listing products that they aren’t able to ship. I recently ordered a drone that I found at an amazing price through their app. After 3 days of waiting, the order was canceled just because the supplier was unable to ship those items. Not only were my funds blocked on my credit card, but I also lost precious time waiting for something that was never meant to be shipped.
- I couldn’t find an easy way to contact their call center as it used to be the case with Souq.com. This is a major issue. Customers should always have a way to reach out to customer support. Noon.com is already doing it and doing it really well.
- The app is slow and sluggish. Even though Noon.com and Souq.com’s apps weren’t 100% native, they excelled in speed. I fail to understand the reason for the slowness in the apps.
- Different accounts for different stores. This one is extremely confusing. When you have an account under one store and you accidentally switch to another store, you will never find the orders that you had placed earlier.
- Order status doesn’t change when order status really changes. I still have two orders in my account that show that they are being shipped to me whereas I clearly have an email confirmation that they’re canceled.
I could go on and on, but I am sure I made my point.
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