Improving Amazon’s Kindle accessory buying experience with one button
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I bought this Kindle Paperwhite about 3 years ago or so. I love using it. I take it with me everywhere, and even though it does not feel fragile, it is always in my mind that I should buy a cover for it.
In fact, I have been trying to buy a cover for it on Amazon’s site for over two years with no success. By now you probably think I’m stupid, but let’s get to the case before you judge me.
Which generation is my kindle from?
Amazon has been launching new models of Paperwhite pretty much every year. They get small improvements between generations, such as brighter backlight, protection against water splashes, higher screen resolution and so on. However the name doesn’t change at all. All of them are the “New Kindle Paperwhite” of that year.
It’s not a big deal, right? Apple does it too. The newest Macbook is always the new Macbook. We can live with that.
But even if the name doesn’t change, the product design does change.
The newest ones are thinner, or don’t have some bezel, or the power button has been moved around. You can’t use a cover made for a past generation in a newer generation device.
So, how does one find the correct cover for their Kindle model?
If you search Amazon for “Kindle Paperwhite Cover”, you will see that most of them do say what device generation they’re made for, but that information is only available because the manufacturer decided to add it to the title of the product. It is not a property of the product that you can filter through or order by, for instance. The device generation is not even available in your Devices page inside your account:
“Type: Kindle Paperwhite”. Helpful, huh? 😉
One button to change everything
Let’s analyse a few solutions to this issue:
- Amazon could just inform which generation your device is right in the Device details page.
- Even better, Amazon could inform the device generation and let you filter search results by generation compatibility.
- And even better than that, Amazon could add a “Show accessories compatible with this device” button to both its search and device UIs.
This is how it would look on the Device details page:
Under your device’s name (mine is called “Paperwhitey” due to a typo), a new section “Accessories” houses a button labeled “Show accessories compatible with this device”. The text under the button says “Opens in a new tab”.
Clicking the button would take you to the Kindle Accessories category on Amazon.com with a filter applied to the query, where only things that are compatible with your device will be shown. There you can specify if you’re looking for covers or something else.
But if you’re already browsing around the website and run into something you’re not sure that is compatible? A badge would help:
Something as simple as a “Compatible with ‘Paperwhitey’” badge next to the product rating would have saved me 2 years of doubts and probably helped Amazon sell millions of kindle covers that did not have to be returned due to compatibility issues!
Amazon started as an online marketplace, but now they make their own hardware too. In all steps of this process you’re using their software to make purchases. You use Amazon.com to order a Kindle, to manage it and then again to search for an accessory and buy it. Somehow, these flows are not as well integrated as they should be. Integration makes the life of users much, much easier. When integration doesn’t work as expected, it leads to frustration.
Even if I decided to buy a Kindle cover at a physical store, how would I have known the right size and model to buy? I’d have to take the device with me, or spend some time googling around for anything that would tell me for sure which product version I have.
Sometimes a very small UI decision makes a ton of difference in your service’s system, it’s more than an interface change, it’s a service design improvement that unfolds to many levels and touch points.
