Amazon Fast Tracks Transformation

Abstract

Amazon opened its web site to the public in 1995, at a time when buying a product on the Internet was far from simple. Few of the product search options, customer reviews and user interfaces that today’s ecommerce shoppers take for granted were fully developed. Each online store made its own idiosyncratic design choices about how to illustrate its products, where to locate the shopping cart icon, and how many steps were needed to complete a purchase. Often such decisions were based on the aesthetic of the site designer rather than on any data about keeping visitors engaged or the best way to manage the checkout process so that customers didn’t abandon their online shopping carts. As Jeff Bezos put it in his 1997 letter to Amazon shareholders, “This is Day 1 for the Internet, and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com” (Bezos 1997).