Improve Website Performance and Monitoring: Amazon - Case Study Example

Improve Website Performance and Monitoring: Amazon Name Institution Lecturer Course Date Introduction Amazon.com, Inc, commonly known as Amazon.com or simply Amazon, is an electronic commerce (e-commerce) company whose headquarters are located in Seattle, Washington. The twenty year old company is an international company and a leader in online retailing, being considered the largest online retailer globally (Loeb, 2013). Amazon operates various retail websites where it sells its own products as well as allows other companies and sellers to sell their products (The New York Times, 2013). The company started off as an online bookstore where it was selling books via the internet, which would then be shipped to customers upon payment. Afterwards, the company diversified its business to include other products and services including consumer goods, digital content, consumer electronics, art work, video and games (The New York Times, 2013). Amazon is also a manufacture of Kindle devices that it also sells through its websites (The New York Times, 2013). Currently, Amazon has a wide range of products and services that it offers to its customers located all over the world who access these products and services from their computers and mobile devices. Customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of almost every business venture especially in high competitive business environments. Amazon operates in a highly competitive business environment where other prominent names such as eBay and Alibaba pose a major competition threat to the company (Loeb, 2013). Since Amazon’s business is centered on websites, the quality of retailing websites operated by Amazon is a major predictor of customer satisfaction. Accordingly, there is a need to improve the company’s website performance and consequently monitor it to ensure optimal performance. In doing so, Amazon will be assured to remain on top of the competition game. This paper proposes the improvement of Amazons website and particularly linking every item appearing on Amazon’s website to the respective manufacturer’s page. This improvement will increase customer satisfaction in that customers will be able to get more details about a product after visiting the respective manufacture’s page, and they will therefore be in a position to make better purchasing decisions. Amazon’s mission is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices” (Amazon, 2012, para. 2). The proposed improvement of Amazon’s website will support the company in its mission because it will allow customers to discover more about the products and services posted on Amazon’s website by being directed to the manufactures of the products and services. Business Need/Problem Customers are arguably the most important stakeholder of any business organization. Therefore, any improvements or changes in the organization aimed improving customer satisfaction should seek to establish improvement needs and opportunities from customers. In other words, business improvements should be customer driven not designed and implemented in such a way that customers have to fit into them (Adam et al., 2005 & Business & Legal Reports, 2005). This therefore calls for market survey to establish problems that a business organization should address (Leebov and Ersoz, 2003). In light of this requirement, a pilot test was conducted to try and establish improvement opportunities for Amazon websites. The study involved 68 students who were asked to give problems with Amazon’s websites that they felt the company should address in order to improve customer experience and satisfaction. In order to ensure that relevant improvement suggestions were given, participants were first required to show their knowledge of the company and how it operates. Only answers from participants who showed deep knowledge of the company and its mode of operation were considered. Accordingly, responses from 42 participants were considered for analysis. A total of 62 problems were identified and these were then reduced into 6 problems using a similarity criterion used to combine closely related problems. The problems are shown in table 1. Table 1: Identified problems showing the frequency of various problems, which were condensed to six problems S.N Problem Frequency 1 Expand upon clicking a product to help see more details 10 2 Allow users to sort products listed by the number of reviews given 7 3 Improve the quality of pictures 12 4 Link products listed to their respective manufacturers’ pages 17 5 Provide better descriptions 11 6 Allow customers to sort products by date it was posted 5 TOTAL 62 As shown in table 1, linking products and services posted on Amazon’s websites to their respective manufacturers’ websites has the highest frequency at 17, which means that it is the main problem facing the website and which customers feel the company should address. Problems 1, 3 and 5 are also affecting the company’s website and they need to be addressing. Addressing this problem will also address problems numbers 1, 3 and 5 because customers will get more details and clearer pictures when they get to manufacturers’ websites. However, it should be understood that owners of some of the products and services listed on Amazon’s websites do not have well established websites that provide sufficient details. In fact, some are small scale business people and individuals such as retailers and writers and they may not have sufficient capital to invest in high-class marketing websites. Therefore, in cases where manufacturers or sellers of some products and services listed on Amazon’s websites do not have established websites, problems 1, 3 and 5 will be addressed, which will be combined under the main task of providing more and better descriptions. Although other identified problems should be addressed as well, the limited time and resources available cannot allow solving all the identified problems. Therefore, the project will involve linking products listed on Amazon’s website with manufacturers’ websites and providing more and better details for each product and service listed on the company’s websites. The problem of insufficient information seems to have persisted for a long time considering that it was the main problem identified with the websites. However, Amazon has never addressed this problem since there is no evidence of such an attempt. Perhaps the failure to address this problem is due to the fact that Amazon allows sellers to sell their products and services through its websites. As such, sellers have the role of ensuring that they provide sufficient details for their products and services. This is evidenced by the fact that some products and services have clear pictures and sufficient details while others have poor pictures and scanty details. Amazon’s target population includes internet users, which is mainly comprised of middle-aged and income-earning people. Failure to provide sufficient and clear details of the products and services listed on Amazon’s websites implies that the target population will not have sufficient information to make purchasing decision and it will probably fail to purchase the product and service. The target population is characterised by wide reading and readiness to process information before making any decision. Additionally, due to the fact that the target population has access to wide sources of information, it will readily switch to other online retailers providing clear images and sufficient details. For example, consider a client from South Africa wanting to purchase a radio from the United States. Amazon has the item the client wants but fails to provide weight and dimensions, which the client might be requiring. Accordingly, the client will seek other sites providing all necessary details. Project Objective Main objective The main objective of this project is to increase Amazon’s customer satisfaction by providing them with more and better information to enable them to make better purchasing decisions. This will in turn increase activity on Amazon’s websites in terms of products sold through Amazon’s websites, which will consequently result to increased organizational performance in terms of revenues. Specific objectives 1) Link items and services listed on Amazon’s websites with their respective sellers’ websites so that customers can have more details upon being directed and opening sellers’ websites; 2) Provide clear pictures for all products listed on Amazon’s websites so that customers can have a clear view of the products before purchasing; and 3) Provide all necessary product details including weight and dimensions without and with packaging to enable customers make better purchasing decisions Time and budget constraints Time constraints: the project is supposed to be completed within 6 months starting 1st June 2014. Therefore, the project is supposed to have been completed by 30th November 2014. Budget constraints: budget is limited to 500 US dollars. Scope of Work Products and services posted on Amazon’s websites do not last there forever. When a product or service is posted on Amazon’s websites, it stays there until a customer purchases it, which may take a few seconds to several days. Therefore, the provision of details and clear images should be an ongoing process even after the completion of the project. Additionally, the linking of a product or service with its respective seller’s website should be an ongoing process. What is required is the establishment of a platform to facilitate these tasks and processes, which is the ultimate goal of this project. The realisation of this goal requires the completion of two main tasks: Customer survey Customer survey enables an organization to gather relevant information about customer satisfaction and more so helps the organization to understand what customers want and improvement opportunities. Customer survey will be the first major task in this project that will determine details that should be included when sellers post their products and services on Amazon’s websites. In other words, results of the customer survey will determine the platform that will be established for providing required information and details. Creation of the form that sellers will fill when posting products and services on Amazon’s websites This is the second and last major task of the project where an online form will be created that sellers wishing to post products and services will fill to ensure that sufficient details and clear images are provided. The scope of work detailing the major tasks alongside their associated subtasks and expected completion time is shown in table 1. Table 2 Task Expected start time Expected finish time Customer Survey 1st June 2014 31st August 2014 Preparation of questionnaires 1st June 2014 15th June 2014 Execution of survey 16th June 2014 15th August 2014 Gathering and analyzing data 16th August 2014 31st August 2014 Form Creation 1st September 30th November 2014 Planning 1st September 2014 2nd September 2014 Team formation 3rd September 2014 7th September 2014 Actual work for form creation 8th September 2014 31st October 2014 Testing Any changes 1st November 2014 30th November 2014 Launching 31st November 2014 Key Personnel Organizational structure for the project team is as shown in figure 1 Figure 1 Group Members Contribution The group has three students who will work together in a majority of the project work including customer survey and form creation work. However, writing final project report will be divided as follows. Table 3 Student’s Name Assigned work Student 1 Introduction Student 2 Methodology Student 3 Discussion and Conclusion At the group level, one student will be assigned the leadership role and the student will be coordinating group progress. Regular meetings will be scheduled and held to track our progress and report to the team leader and course facilitator in the form of progress reports. Online meetings with our team leader from Amazon will also be scheduled where we shall discuss our progress and any challenges we are facing on the ground. Endorsements This project proposal was presented to Amazon, and the company pledged full support, financially and technically. Amazon, Seattle, Washington References Adam, O., Chikova, P., Hofer, A., Vanerhaeghen, D. & Zang, S. (2005). E-Collaboration Architecture for Customer-Driven Business Processes in Inter-Organizational Scenarios. In M. Funabashi & A. Grzech (Eds.). Challenges of Expanding Internet: E-Commerce, E-Business and E-Government (pp. 63-78). Springer. Amazon. (2013). About Amazon. Accessed January 4, 2014 from http://www.amazon.com/Careers-Homepage/b?ie=UTF8&node=239364011 Business & Legal Reports. (2005). Making the Business Case for EHS Programs. Saybrook, CT: Business & Legal Reports, Inc. Leebov, W. & Ersoz, C. J. (2003). The Health Care Manager’s Guide to Continuous Quality Improvement. Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press. Loeb, W. (2013). Alibaba is a Threat to Amazon, eBay, Wal-Mart and Everyone Else. Forbes. Accessed January 4, 2014 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2013/07/24/alibaba-a-threat-to-amazon-ebay-walmart-and-everyone-else/ The New York Times. (2013). Amazon.com Inc. accessed January 4, 2014 from http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amazon_inc/index.html Read More