Project Career Path
Project Career Path
Project Career Path
My role in this project:
My role in this project:
I am the Product Manager on this project working closely with engineers, designers, data scientists, operations and marketing specialists.
I am the Product Manager on this project working closely with engineers, designers, data scientists, operations and marketing specialists.
My role in this project:
I am the Product Manager on this project working closely with engineers, designers, data scientists, operations and marketing specialists.
This is a personal project that uses kinetic motion to illustrate the song "The History of Everything", which gives the song a different visual narrative in motion.
This is a personal project that uses kinetic motion to illustrate the song "The History of Everything", which gives the song a different visual narrative in motion.
Making Money with CPM Ads
Web Design, B2B, Amazon, Ads
Background
Amazon has launched a display ad network, in the form of Amazon CPM ads, to members of its online affiliates program, Amazon Associates (launched in 1996, has 5M users). Amazon CPM Ads is a brand new product for Amazon Associates and is a way for publishers to make money by showing display ads on their websites with Amazon. This Amazon Associates page is being revamped after 19 years and the Amazon CPM Ads, as our cutting edge new product, is a critical part of revamping the overall Amazon Associates site.
The goal of this project is to redesign the existing Amazon CPM Ads pages (the beta version) to new look and feel of revamp Associates Central, thus create an improved user experience and help our publishers making more revenue by adopting display ads from Amazon.
Old Amazon Associates Central
Sitemap Analysis
Define User Group and Key Flow
For this UX design stage, we are optimizing for two main user scenarios:
New to Amazon CPM Ads (Group 1)
Associate John D. has been an Amazon affiliate since March 2010. He was recently sent an invitation to try out a new CPM monetization from Amazon – Amazon CPM Ads.
John Doe is interested in the new program and clicks on the link in the email he received or comes to Associates Central directly and notices the new Amazon CPM Ads tab in his Global navigation.
John clicks the Amazon CPM Ads tab and is taken to the About CPM Ads Landing Page which has a video on getting started and value proposition for the program.
Integrated with Amazon CPM Ads (Group 2)
Associate Mike S. has been an Amazon Affiliate since Jan 2007 and was an early adopter of Amazon CPM Ads since he was whitelisted into the beta program in Sept 2014. Mike has created multiple ad codes is actively sending traffic and receiving impressions from the CPM Ads program. Mike visits Associates Central often to check on the performance of the CPM Ads program and optimizes by managing his ad codes and their target CPM.
When Mike clicks on the Amazon CPM Ads tab he is taken to the Amazon CPM Ads Dashboard page.
Pain points & Product Opportunities
The Beta Version of CPM Ads
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Navigation is out of order, main nav and sub nav on the left are disconnected and lack of selected status
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Promotions module is neither in the right place nor designed to attract clicks
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Information hierarchy is a mess
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Unmet needs from user interview:
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Summary feature - users don't have much time to go through all the detailed info very often but would like to do a quick check on earnings and key performance on a daily basis
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Need a detailed dynamic performance chart and advanced filter functionalities - users want to make comparisons among different factors, therefore they can adjust their strategy to make more profit​
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Reports for CPM ads
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Learn From Competitors
Amazon CPM Value Prop
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A guaranteed amount for every ad impression
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Attractive ads from Amazon and other brand-name advertisers
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Easy set-up and management
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Ads matched to your users based on Amazon’s personalization technology
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A program designed to work with your existing ad network or ad server
Wireframe Evaluation
I’ve created three different wireframe options based on what we learned from our competitors as well as the pros and cons of the current website solution.
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Option#1 is deep linking the “Amazon CPM Ads” tab and the CPM report page under the “Report” tab;
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Option#2 is to duplicate the CPM report page under the “Report” tab to the “Amazon CPM Ads” Tab;
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Option#3 is to have minimal info on the CPM report page under the “Report” tab, have everything on pages under the “Amazon CPM Ads” tab.
Option# 3 was adopted for two reasons:
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This solution works for a wider range of our target customers;
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The workflow logic in this option is more clear, make more sense in terms of navigating through different layers of info.
Dashboard
Management
Performance - "All" Table
Reports - Main Nav
Performance - "Viewable" Table
CPM Ads - Help
UI Design
CPM Ads Dashboard Page
The proposed Amazon CPM Ads Dashboard serves as a starting point for all things related to Amazon CPM Ads. It is the landing page for Associates who have integrated with Amazon CPM Ads when they click on the Amazon CPM Ads tab on Global Navigation on AmazonAssociates.
We want Dashboard to be a one-stop place for a quick summary of your earnings and summary of how your site(s) and ad code(s) are performing along with key actions you need to take for further optimizing your performance. We believe a lot of our publishers might just visit this page on daily basis and use Performance and Management tabs as needed.
CPM Ads Performance Page
This is a more detailed drilled down performance specific to CPM Ads at domain and ad code level with additional information like viewability metrics.
There are three filters sit on top across the Performance Chart and Ad Unit Details table. This is a dynamic page which means whenever one of the filter’s data is changed, all the data showed in the Performance Chart and the Ad Unit Details will be changes all together automatically. This feature is good for our publishers to make comparisons among different factors, therefore they can adjust their strategy to make more profit.
CPM Ads Performance Page
Select a date range
CPM Ads Performance Page
Select a site or multiple sites
CPM Ads Performance Page
Personalize ad unit details selections
CPM Ads Management Page
Various tools to manage ad codes and functionality like advertiser blocking, publisher quality score management, and revenue optimization management. Some of these are new and on the roadmap for 2015.
CPM Ads Help Page
Help Content – getting started videos and guides specific to CPM Ads, access to top FAQ’s related to CPM Ads.
Reflection
I’ve sharpened my understanding of the different mindsets between designing B2B and B2C products.
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First, users needs for many B2C products can be subjective(like social products) while B2B products usually have clear goals which are either to lower the costs or increase efficiency. Second, minimalism is the trend of choice for a quality product, and has been since the start of the Steve Jobs era. However, for in B2B scenarios it's a luxury rather than a priority because of the complexity in system/information architecture design. The key is to balance conciseness with complexity in a harmonious way. I applied this method when I designed the dynamic reporting chart and table. There are up to 17 parameters in the table; the key challenge was how to create UI and UX to make them accessible/customizable without confusing the user. In order to achieve that goal, I created a table that shows the 9 most important parameters in default view, and folded the rest of them into a drop down menu. Customers can easily swap out the parameters according to their specific needs. Instead of stopping here in design, I pushed myself to think further in terms of making the experience more intuitive. Thus I designed a dynamic chart that can change automatically if a certain parameter is changed in the connected table and vice versa. This design allows customers to see the results in an intuitive way.
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I also learned that when facing complex problems, I need to think about the big picture starting to build a specific piece.
In this case, there were two high level problems, one was to redesign the whole navigation structure of the Amazon Associates platform, and the other was to redesign the beta version of CPM ads and make if fit into the Amazon Associate platform. I took the initiative of thinking about the overall structure of Amazon Associate site first, I spent a lot of time and effort communicating with other teams whose products also lived in the platform. Thus I could plan ahead for the big structure and create a solution capable of accommodating the CPM ads when they were ready for integration.