Making Reviews Effortless and Meaningful
Reviews are crucial for users making purchase decisions — they build trust, offer social proof, and reduce uncertainty. However, not many customers leave reviews after buying products on Amazon, which reduces overall buyer confidence and lower conversion rates. I redesigned Amazon’s review experience to make feedback seamless, inclusive, and rewarding — aligning user motivation with business goals.
Project Description
Type of work
Self Project
TImeline
2 weeks (Apr'25)
My role
Product Designer
Contribution
Research
UX
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Prototypes
Possible Business Impact
Increased Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
Operational Cost Savings
Enhanced Brand Reputation
Background
I was purchasing a pair of shoe for my daughter. While going through the review sections I was intrigued to find a gap between product ratings and reviews. While digging deep I also found a incereased proportion of negative reviews that are detailed while positive reviews are often short and minimal.
Current Behaviour Assumption
Many users only leave reviews after negative experiences. Positive experiences often go unreported due to lack of motivation or friction in the review process.
Business Impact
Overrepresentation of negative reviews
Reduces overall buyer confidence.
Lower conversion rates.
Affects Amazon’s sales and brand trust.
Analysis
Analysing the existing review flow
Friction
The current review flow is time-consuming and tedious, especially for satisfied customers.
Timing
Reviews are often requested at inconvenient moments, leading to frustration or forgetfulness.
Motivation
Customers don't perceive a personal benefit to writing a review unless extremely dissatisfied or pleased.
Inclusivity
Some users struggle with what to write or how to express themselves effectively.
Goal
Design interventions that encourage more customers to leave product reviews after purchase, increasing the review volume.
Create a more accurate reflection of product quality.
Improve buyer confidence during purchase decisions.
Drive higher customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.
My Role
Solving my side notes
This is an approach to solve the problems I identified while working at IFB and by using their products as a customer
I worked on this project alone while simultaneously managing other projects at IFB.
I utilized these other projects as a testing ground and for data collection to strengthen this project. Additionally, I conducted interviews with numerous existing customers and the customer service center at the Head Office to gain deeper insights into pain points.
Considerations
Leaving a review is Amazon’s business need, not the user’s goal.
User's Goal
Buy the product and move on.
Amazon’s Goal
Gather user feedback to build trust, improve rankings, and boost sales.
Problem Statement
How might we create motivation or reduce friction enough that users want to leave a review — or at least don't mind doing it?
Lead users to review page seamlessly
a. Timely Notifications
Simplified email reminders with changed frequecy from 7 days to 3 days
Exisitng
Redesigned
Contextual pop-ups in notification drawer along with the product imageries helps the users recall instantly .
a. In-App Push Notifications
On choosing to click the stars, they will be redirected to the review page: Making it a quick link to the review page
I considered submitting the review directly from the notification, but avoided to encourage high quality reviews.
Multiple items in the order
Not all the ordered items can be emotionally framed
How can we ensure the notifications does not adds to the frustration or feel spammy
2. Help the user submit a complete, high quality review
What makes a high quality review?
Detail Description
A detailed description with sentiment clarity connects with the audience and help them gain confidence in their purchase decision
Real Photos & Videos
Visbiliity of how the product looks like in the real life compared to the render images in the PDP helps the user to see the actual product.
Helpfulness Votes
Votes on reviews from the people whom the review helped to make the purchase decision helps the reinforce trust and reliability for the new users.
Helping them write a detailed description
a. Keyword Prompting
Ask users, “What did you like most?” with pre-set keyword options.
Auto-generate a drafted review based on their choices (users can edit if needed).
This helps both a Clara and Rahman to easily choose what they like about the the product and the system generates a descriptive review. Then can review and submit.
I started with a simple layout that prioritizes the ‘Generate a Review’ feature upfront to reduce friction.
Keyword Selection
Generated Review
Assumption
The “Generate Review” feature is expected to achieve strong adoption post-release due to its simplicity and low effort required from users.
Challenge
Generating a reviews with these fixed keywords leads to a templatized repeated review description.
Solution
If we observe a shift in user behavior and a significant increase in review submissions, we can introduce additional incentives for manual inputs (written or recorded) and reorder the tabs to encourage more personalized and robust reviews.
b. Voice to text
Most GenZs and most of the non-Latin speakers would prefer voice notes.
Voice-to-text APIs combined with NLP generate/translate the review.
Research
This aligns with Rahman's usual way of expressing (similar to WhatsApp) to talk about the the product in his native language and the system generates a descriptive review.
Simplified email reminders with changed frequecy from 7 days to 3 days
Exisitng
Redesigned
Encourage Real Media Uploads:
Real photos and videos from the actual users gain more trust from the fellow buyers.
Research
Incentivizing to upload real photos and videos encourage users like Rahman.
3. Motivating users to submit a high quality review
Recognizing that submitting a review is fundamentally Amazon’s business need, not the user’s goal, instead of simply asking users to “do us a favor,” I starting from the user’s perspective — “What’s in it for me?”
Emotional
Displaying possible incentive-earning potential clearly.
By clearly communicating the incentives the user could earn by completing certain tasks could motivate the user in successfully complete the task.
Telling users could earn incentives from notifications
Added incentives for submitting the photos//videos
Total incentives they could earn right above the Submit CTA give that gentle push in completing the task
Displaying total incentives they earned on completing the task
Social
Creating a sense of social validation and belongingness
Showing leaderboards and milestones with progress nudges.
Award badges for top reviewers (similar to Spotify’s listener badges) and allow sharing badges on social media for social proof and additional motivation.
Showing users how their review helps other buyers create a sense of community and belongingness.
Displaying the earned incentive alongside the updated total points, creating a feeling of accomplishment.
Offering a glimpse of upcoming milestone rewards, subtly encouraging users to stay engaged and complete more reviews.
Showing community impact data: “Your reviews helped 50+ people make better purchase decisions.”
Practical
Tangible rewards promotes cross selling and savings
Promoting cashback on achieving milestones on the leader board encourages the users to accumulate more incentives, thus an increase in the review submission.
Gift coupons gives the users a sense of achievement while the brand could promote brands and upsell other products on the platform.
Amazon Pay cashback upon achieving milestones.
Gift coupons to certain brands helps the users to save on their next purchase and the brand to cross-selling other products.
Possible Outcome
Increased Volume of Reviews
Improved Quality of Reviews
Boosted User Engagement & Community Feeling
Possible Impact
Higher Conversion Rates on Product Pages
A more balanced and abundant set of reviews improves buyer confidence, reducing abandonment at the consideration stage.
Stronger Seller Feedback Loop
Higher-quality reviews also benefit sellers, helping them improve product quality and service, ultimately strengthening Amazon’s marketplace ecosystem.
Thanks for reading it through!
