Prime Rewards

My role: Lead product designer
Timeline: 4 months, 2024
Collaborated with: Product, Engineering, Data Science,
UX research, UX Writing, Legal, Grocery and Shopping orgs
Platforms: Mobile, Desktop

Introduction

Prime Everyday Rewards is a rewards program designed to increase Everyday Essentials shopping frequency among existing Prime members in Europe. Compared to the US, EU Prime members shop Everyday Essentials significantly less often, which limits habit formation and weakens the perceived everyday value of Prime.

Understanding the Problem

While Prime members are highly engaged with Amazon for planned purchases, many do not rely on Amazon for routine replenishment. Internal benchmarks showed that Everyday Essentials shopping frequency among EU Prime members is roughly 50 percent lower than in the US.
This gap limits purchase frequency, reduces share of wallet, and contributes to lower perceived Prime value. Existing discounts created short-term behavior but did not meaningfully change long-term habits.

Research and Inputs

To better understand EU expectations, we reviewed:

Internal EU Prime shopping behavior
Customer research on reward perception
Benchmark programs in Amazon Japan
Competitor loyalty programs (Tesco, Carrefour, Aldi)

Which showed:

Rewards programs are common in these markets
Customers expect clarity and simplicity
Value is judged by ease of earning and redeeming

Ideation

To increase Everyday Essentials frequency, we explored:

One-time discounts
Category-specific promotions
Loyalty points
Cashback-style rewards

We prioritized a rewards-based program to:

Encourage repeat purchases
Build everyday shopping habits
Support long-term engagement

Hypothesis

If Prime members are rewarded consistently for Everyday Essentials purchases and can clearly see their progress and rewards, they will increase shopping frequency and shift more of their everyday spend to Amazon.

User Flow and Journey

Before exploring interface solutions, I defined the end-to-end user journey to ensure the experience supported behavior change over time rather than isolated interactions. The flow was intentionally designed as a closed loop that reinforces Everyday Essentials shopping through activation, visible progress, and repeated reward feedback.

Success Metrics

Primary Metric

Everyday Essentials purchase frequency (EU)

Secondary Metrics

Program activation rate
Redemption rate at checkout

Guardrail Metrics

Support contacts
Conversion impact on core shopping flows

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

With the journey defined, early exploration focused on validating structure and mental models before committing to detailed UI or visual polish. I created multiple low-fidelity wireframe iterations to explore different entry points, activation patterns, and progress visibility approaches within the flow.

Tradeoffs

To reduce financial risk, we:

Scoped the program to Everyday Essentials
Launched as a limited-time pilot
Deferred expansion to all purchases

Collaboration

Partnered with:

Product, Legal and Finance on rules and expiration
Shopping orgs across key surfaces
UX Writing on program messaging

High-Fidelity Wireframes

Once the structure and framing were validated, I moved into high-fidelity design to refine visual hierarchy, component behavior, and integration across shopping surfaces. This phase included multiple design passes across discovery surfaces, the rewards hub, product detail pages, and checkout.

Design System and Scalability

The program reused existing Amazon rewards infrastructure to ensure consistency and reduce implementation risk. While the underlying reward logic already existed, there was no unified customer-facing experience for activation, progress tracking, or offer discovery.

I designed a new Rewards Hub and its supporting components, including activation states, progress indicators, reward balance visibility, and offer presentation. These components were created as reusable patterns that could scale across European markets and extend to future Prime initiatives.

Usability Testing

Testing with 20 participants showed:

Easy to understand how rewards work
Clear understanding of progress tracking
Positive response to checkout redemption
Average usability score: 4.7 / 5

Results

Primary Metric

~15% lift in Everyday Essentials purchase frequency

Secondary Metrics

Strong program activation
Consistent reward redemption at checkout

Guardrails

No meaningful increase in support contacts
No negative impact to core conversion

Learnings and Impact

This project demonstrated that rewards are most effective when designed as part of the core shopping experience. Frequency-based incentives, visible progress, and seamless redemption were critical to shaping behavior. Scalable systems and strong cross-functional alignment enabled efficient rollout across multiple European markets.

The pilot validated rewards as a sustainable lever to reduce the Everyday Essentials shopping frequency gap between Europe and the United States and informed future Prime value and loyalty initiatives.